Katie Kropas did not have time to send out any "We're expecting!" announcements or throw a baby shower for herself. She didn't have time to buy a crib or paint the walls of a nursery. In fact, she didn't have much time to prepare for baby anything -- because just an hour after finding out she was pregnant, she was already holding her 10-pound-3-ounce baby girl in her arms.
The 23-year-old (unexpecting) new mom from Weymouth, Mass. called in sick for the first time ever and was driven to the emergency room by her grandmother because of stomach pains that just kept getting worse and worse. Little did she know that those intensifying sharp pains were actually labor pains!
According to reports, Kropas did not exhibit any of the expected signs of pregnancy like morning sickness. Although she was carrying around some extra weight and started to get swollen ankles, she thought it was caused by standing on her feet at her job 50 hours a week during the busy holidays as a catering supervisor at Gennaro's Eatery in Quincy.
Kropas' boyfriend of two years, Dan Keefe, who also works at Gennaro's, was able to call her parents and tell them the surprising news from the hospital. They rushed to the hospital to be present during the delivery and they were all together when they welcomed the newest addition to their family at 11:06 p.m.
Although the whole family is understandably in shock at having a new baby in the mix, they are all excited, and both mother and baby are in perfect health. Kropas has said she may name her daughter "Ellie," after the grandmother who drove her to the ER.
"It's going to be a hard couple of first weeks, especially since I didn't have a lot of time to prepare but, I love her," Katie said of her newborn daughter.
Surprise births, like Kropas', are not as uncommon as one might think. Refered to as cryptic pregnancies, some mothers, especially during first time pregnancies, are unaware of the changes to expect in their bodies. Stomach pains are attributed to gas; weight gain blamed on eating more during the holidays; even irregular periods can make pregnancies come as a surprise to at least one in every 2,500 births, according to a British study.
