How One Couple Kept From Freaking Out When They Found Out the Woman's Kidney Stones Were Actually a Baby
The Internet recently celebrated a surprise birth - that of Shaun Jaegers, whose parents initially thought was a kidney stone plaguing unsuspecting mom-to-be Stephanie Jaegers. (Obviously, adorable small human > kidney stone.)
The couple arrived at the hospital at 10:15 p.m., learned a baby was coming at around 12:30 a.m., and their son was born at 3:50 a.m., giving the Jaegers family little to no time to prepare for a newborn baby. So what's a family to do?
Naturally, in the short amount of time between discovering she had a baby coming and giving birth, Stephanie was filled with questions.
"You know, I had all these things going through my mind, like, why didn't I know he was there, why didn't I feel anything, why was I still getting my period?" She says she missed out on one of her favorite parts of pregnancy: feeling the baby kick. (The reason she didn't feel the baby, she says, was because he was breech and folded - and positioned under her rib. She also thought she was just bloated.)
Her husband, Michael - who later wrote a Facebook post that led to Shaun's story going viral - wondered if he should tell their three other children at first. "God forbid if we lost the baby," he says, considering the last-minute nature of Stephanie's hospitalization. "You go through so many emotions." He started obsessing over every single detail that had happened for the past eight months - like how Stephanie had broken her ankle and had to have an x-ray only a week and a half before. It was tough for them to wrap their head around what was happening – as one would expect to be the case.
"[I was in] immediate denial until we heard the heartbeat – then it hit us," Michael, says. "We didn't know the sex, we didn't know anything until she was in the delivery room and there's ten other nurses [there] and she's having a breech vaginal birth," which is typically not the case - but Stephanie says that after initially deciding on having a C-section, she found out she was too far along and already dilated ten centimeters.
"Oh, crap, we have to come up with a name for it!" Michael says he joked.
Luckily, the Jaegers kids have totally embraced the unexpect newborn, and the family still had a crib and a carseat from their previous kids.
While the family hadn't planned on having anymore children before Shaun arrived, Michael admitted, "We wouldn't change it for the world. It's our little miracle."
And his advice for anybody else who has a surprise baby?
"Don't stress out, it'll all work out in the end," he says. "Always accept it as a blessing, and everything happens for a reason."
Oh - and perhaps it's best to not judge others who have babies out of the blue.
"I've read stories like this in the past about women who didn't know [they were pregnant.] I was like, 'there's no way you didn't know!'" Stephanie says. "But taking into account all the different factors - him sitting the way he was, having my period throughout, no morning sickness - [it] definitely wasn't the typical pregnancy. I had no clue! Next time I read a story about a woman that didn't know she was pregnant, I'll be less likely to judge. I understand now."
And to anyone who thinks they could have kidney stones but are hesitant to confirm, you should maybe get that checked out. The more you know, right?
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