Charlene Wells, a 28-year-old from Nelson, New Zealand, “was pretty shocked” when she gave birth to a healthy baby boy Thursday, Stuff.co.nz reports. When she went to the hospital with severe abdominal pains, she “thought it was kidney stones or something,” but she was actually in labor without even having known she was 40 weeks pregnant first.
“Most people have eight or nine months to prepare,” Wells told Stuff.co.nz. “We had about nine hours.” Wells’s placenta had been resting at the front of her stomach, so she’d never felt any kicking or moving from the baby. She’d had some lower back pain recently but attributed it to long hours on her feet at work and any weight she’d gained in the past few months she assumed was a result of the long winter.
Wells and her partner Eamon Parkes have been together nine years but hadn’t planned to have a family. Regardless, Parkes has been “over the moon” since Carlo arrived, Wells said. In fact, Parkes said Carlo was “the best [Christmas] present I could ever ask for.”
Merry early Christmas indeed!