Cryptic Pregnancy: Woman gives birth to surprise boy after mistaking labor for constipation

A woman has surprisingly given birth to a baby after going to the bathroom thinking she was constipated.

Marla McEntire, 34, had no idea she was pregnant when she gave birth to healthy baby boy Atlas in February.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: New mom shares giving birth to surprise baby.

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McEntire, from Georgia, was on birth control when she became pregnant in May 2022 and didn’t show any signs she expected.

“I never showed it. My tummy was soggy, my belly button wouldn’t pop out, no morning sickness,” she said in one of many TikTok posts describing her “cryptic pregnancy.”

“I never felt a kick, nothing.”

A cryptic pregnancy occurs when a woman does not know she is pregnant or does not realize she is pregnant until labor begins.

In another post, McEntire said she only missed one period.

She said she took a pregnancy test afterwards, but it came back negative – even though she was three months old.

In January 2023, McEntire developed hip pain and “stomach problems” and saw a chiropractor and doctor.

But no one noticed she was pregnant, and the doctor believed the condition was due to having her gallbladder removed when she was 23.

A month later, in late February, as McEntire was preparing to leave for a four-day camping music festival in Florida, she began suffering from constipation.

“I pretty much assumed I was going to die,” she said on TikTok of the excruciating pain she was feeling.

“I sent my dad to the store to get me some laxatives and I go back and forth, back and forth to the toilet about five times.”

McEntire had the shock of her life the fifth time she went to the bathroom.

“I looked in the toilet and he’s in there with water up to his ears and just under his chin,” she told the New York Post.

“[Atlas was]just looking up at me, like, ‘Will you get me out of here, mom?'”

McEntire yelled at her father, who rushed in and helped pull Atlas out of the toilet bowl.

The family called 911 and McEntire’s father was told to tie off the umbilical cord.

“And he was like, well, I’m really not comfortable with this,” McEntire recalled in a three-part Story Time post on Tiktok.

“So he takes a chip clip,[the kind you use to close your[potato]chips, and uses it to cut my umbilical cord until the paramedics get there.”

The family lives “in the middle of nowhere,” so it took 20 minutes for emergency services to arrive.

“At this point I’m just laying on the floor with my dad and I’m like, ‘What’s happening?'” she said.

“So much to process at once.”

As she lay on the floor, her father began cleaning Atlas.

“The bathroom looks like a crime scene and we’re just trying to stay as quiet as possible,” McEntire said.

“We just managed to keep our cool until the paramedics got there.”

When they arrived, the mother and baby were taken to the hospital, where they were accompanied by their father, sister and aunt.

There, the family realized, “We don’t have anything for a baby.”

“About a day later, all my friends and family started banding together to get me everything I needed for Atlas,” she said.

“My baby is literally taken care of for the next two years. It was just this most beautiful outpouring of love.”

Despite being caught completely unaware, McEntire loves the symbolism of the timing of her surprising son’s birth.

“What’s really cool about all of this is that the baby was born on February 27 at 11:28 p.m. — and that’s 30 minutes before my dad’s birthday,” she said.

“So, (they have) bonded even more for life than they would have already been.”

The family recently threw McEntire at a baby shower, which Atlas attended.

“Atlas Cohen, you are perfect and so loved. I can’t believe the outpouring of love this little miracle and I have received,” she wrote in a post on Instagram.

“We are so incredibly blessed and I can’t wait to love him for the rest of my life.”

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