Bryony was slim and healthy when these photos were taken. Weeks later she felt ill and went to lie down. What happened next was the most shocking thing imaginable

Bryony Mills-Evans presumed the cramping stomach pains that she had overnight and throughout her day at work as a beautician were nothing more than period pains.

But as she was closing up the shop for the night, events took a dramatic turn.

Not only did the pains in her abdomen intensify, but Bryony became aware of a tightening sensation around her middle.

‘It felt as if my leggings were too small,’ says Bryony, 28, from Caersws, Powys.

She tugged the waist of the leggings down and then lay on a treatment bed hoping the pains would pass.

‘I lay there for around 20 minutes and the cramps grew worse and stronger,’ she says.

‘Then suddenly I felt something pop out between my legs and realised in horror and shock it was a head!’

Bryony was not having period pains, she was in labour – despite having no idea she was pregnant.

She recalls: ‘I sat there, looking at my baby girl and thinking how had this happened?

‘I had no symptoms, no morning sickness, no bump, no cravings – but most of all, I’d had periods every month.

‘I hadn’t planned on being a mum at this age – I was 23. And the father and I were not together anymore. I was in total, utter shock. I couldn’t believe I’d carried a baby and not realised.

‘I was lying on a bed, at work, a baby on my stomach and my phone was dead and charging in the front of the salon.

‘I froze for a while, with the umbilical cord still attached. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel an immediate bond as most mothers might as I had no idea I was even expecting.’

After around 20 minutes Bryony felt able to slide off the bed, wrap her daughter in towels and make her way to the front of the salon to retrieve her phone and call for an ambulance.

It might seem extraordinary that someone could be pregnant and not know it – but it can and does happen.

Known as a cryptic or stealth pregnancy (which means a woman has no idea she is expecting until she is at least five months’ pregnant), the woman may experience no weight gain or sickness and even not see a bump. She may bleed – for instance when the embryo implants, which is mistaken for menstrual bleeding.

And it isn’t as rare as you might think: a 2023 study in the journal Case Reports in Women’s Health, based on data from women in Berlin, Germany, found ‘pregnancy denial’ – a term interchangeable with cryptic pregnancy – at 20 weeks in one in 475 pregnancies and one in 2,500 at full term.

If the same trend is true in the UK, that means there may be some 325 surprise births each year.

The study’s author, Dr Kirsten Duckitt, a clinical associate professor in the division of general gynaecology and obstetrics at Vancouver Island Hospitals, told the Mail’s Good Health: ‘I was surprised at the numbers – it was more common than I would have thought.’

Cryptic pregnancy is not to be confused with concealed pregnancy, which historically ‘was the term for where the woman had a good idea what was going on but for whatever reason did not want to reveal it’, says Dr Duckitt.

In rare cases cryptic pregnancy may be associated with women being unable to come to terms with the fact that they are pregnant, says Professor Susan Bewley, a consultant obstetrician and an emeritus professor of obstetric and women’s health at King’s College London.

‘There are some powerful psychological forces in our heads – we can hold two opposite views at once, so we are aware there is something going on we don’t want to see and therefore we don’t feel it.’

In other words, on a subconscious level these women know they are pregnant but can’t bring themselves to face that fact.

But most commonly it occurs where the woman has never even considered it a possibility – there is no weight gain or morning sickness, for instance. Women may confuse small spotting that may occur due to bleeding from the edge of the placenta as a period.

‘And those who have irregular periods may think the odd bleed is perfectly normal for them,’ adds Dr Duckitt.

What’s more, some ‘carry pregnancies differently and some are more obvious than others’, she says.

She recalls a woman who arrived at hospital ‘rolling around in pain’ and who had no idea she was pregnant.

‘It wasn’t until I did a vaginal examination and found a head that we all realised she was about to deliver. We had to wheel her very quickly to the labour ward!’

Professor Bewley says that while it is ‘unusual not to notice you are pregnant, it is possible – and most gynaecologists and obstetricians will have met cryptic pregnancy in a long career more than once’.

She herself has seen it happen in women who thought they’d gone through menopause – only to discover late into their pregnancy that they are about to give birth.

But cryptic pregnancies are more common among young women and those who have irregular periods.

Another factor that may make it more likely is if the placenta is lying at the front of the womb, as this can ‘muffle’ the sensation from the baby’s kicks.

‘It’s as if the baby is kicking through a thick piece of meat and might mean the mother does not get the shockwaves in the body to feel the kicks,’ says Professor Bewley.

‘We certainly know that women with the placenta in front of the baby and who know they are pregnant, feel foetal movement less.

‘There’s also a thing called borborygmi, which is that funny noise you make when your bowels move. Some women get that a lot and so wouldn’t necessarily feel the baby move if they already have those types of movements.’

Bryony stresses that she was not in denial about her pregnancy: ‘I just had no idea,’ she says.

‘I’d broken up with my long-term boyfriend, Rob, a few months earlier and had not been seeing anyone else since. I had no reason to believe I was expecting.’

It took two hours for the ambulance to arrive, during which time she delivered the placenta and cut the umbilical cord as she noticed it turning white as the blood drained from it.

‘Instinct told me I needed to get rid of it, so I grabbed some little eyebrow scissors and cut it,’ says Bryony, recalling the event in November 2019.

She then texted her mum, asking her to meet her at hospital explaining she had just had a baby – who dashed to the hospital for an emotional meeting.

‘She was shocked and so emotional, but so full of love,’ says Bryony.

There, doctors checked her over and confirmed both she and her daughter, Willow, who weighed 6lb 14oz, were doing well. She was discharged the next day.

However, Bryony admits the lack of preparedness meant she found life with a newborn difficult.

‘I’d no idea about feeding, never changed a nappy and was home with a newborn,’ she says.

‘No doctors asked me for a follow-up or explained why this had happened. I was just sent home with this baby.

‘Midwives visited me for a few days after the birth, and then the health visitor once or twice – but there was no extra help.’

A few days later she broke the news to Rob, who was excited. The pair rekindled their relationship, with Bryony and baby Willow living with her mum and Rob at his parent’s – until they bought a house three years later.

‘Rob and I learnt quickly and fell in love with her.’ says Bryony.

Bryony’s baby came as a shock not just to her but to her friends too – some of whom even sent her messages asking if she’d made it up. When she and her friends first met up again, they were all emotional – ‘some of them even cried’.

Bryony and Rob now have a second child, a boy, Parker, 18 months; Willow is now five.

This pregnancy was normal and she felt him moving and did not have periods.

‘Strangely with Parker, I looked very pregnant!’ she says.

‘Looking back now I can see I was very tired with my first pregnancy but I just put it down to working a lot and a busy social life.

‘Willow was a complete surprise, but now I can’t imagine life without her.’