'I gave birth in a toilet - I'm 43 and had no pregnancy symptoms'

Leanne Henshaw was successful for a daze erstwhile she utilized the toilet 1 nighttime and discovered she was successful labour - contempt claiming to person nary gestation symptoms

Looking guardant to a bully night’s slumber successful her ain bed, Leanne Henshaw drifted disconnected mulling implicit fantastic memories of her African holiday. Sipping cocktails connected the formation successful her bikini arsenic she listened to the lapping waves, it had been hard to judge that, backmost location successful Liverpool, everyone was shivering successful the October chill.

She, her taxi operator hubby Paul, 47, and their daughters Mollie, 26, Lilly, 18, and Grace, 16, had been having a beauteous time, soaking up the sun. She adjacent went equine riding. Since getting location earlier that day, though, she’d been having immoderate archer communicative tummy pains.

Creeping retired of furniture astatine 4am to usage the loo, she was beauteous definite her play was starting. But, arsenic she sat connected the toilet, something precise unexpected happened… she gave commencement to an 8lb babe boy!

Leanne, 43, tells The Mirror: "I was perfectly good each time until I went to furniture and woke up with pains, arsenic if I needed the toilet. It felt unbearable. But I thought I was having atrocious play cramps.

"I didn't adjacent deliberation astir what was happening until I looked down and saw a head. I was screaming for Paul that I was having a baby.

"Oliver was retired earlier I could adjacent number to 10.” Rushing to her assistance aft proceeding her screams, Paul and Lilly some witnessed Oliver’s birth.

"Paul conscionable went into autopilot and reacted the lone mode helium knew how, by picking the babe up and keeping him connected his thorax until the ambulance arrived," says Leanne. Leanne, who doesn’t work, had nary crushed to deliberation she was large - particularly arsenic she’d had a commencement power injection 18 months earlier.

And she’d been drinking and smoking passim the pregnancy. Fortunately, Oliver is perfectly healthy, but Leanne is inactive successful shock.

She says: "I had nary symptoms astatine all. There was nary bump, sickness oregon other value and I was inactive having periods. I've been having commencement power injections each 3 years for 16 years and I was obscurity adjacent owed for another.”

Lilly, who owns a sportswear business, is arsenic astounded. She says of her babe brother’s delivery: "It was the astir surreal and brainsick experience. Just 48 hours before, my mum was horseback riding connected a beach.

"She was wearing a bikini and we had nary thought she was pregnant. Mum was successful Krakow 3 weeks earlier doing 30,000 steps a day. The greeting Oliver was born, I was sleeping and I could perceive my mum screaming from the bathroom.

"When I went out, I did not expect to spot my dada covered caput to toed successful humor and holding a baby. The bath looked similar the country of a murder. My mum was successful daze for astir 3 days but she’s been amazing. Even though she’s had 3 children, she said she had nary thought she was successful labour until she saw Oliver’s head.”

After Paul called an ambulance, mum and babe were taken to hospital, but conscionable six hours aboriginal they’d been fixed the each wide and sent home. With nary babe apparel oregon instrumentality successful the house, friends and household kindly pulled unneurotic to bargain essentials for the newborn, leaving Leanne with lone a pram to get.

Lilly laughs: "He's got capable apparel to past him until he's one. Everyone has been amazing, but radical didn't judge america astatine first."

When she phoned her grandma and told her astir Oliver’s arrival, she really hung up, reasoning it was a prank. "My dada said I’d amended telephone my nan and she told maine ne'er to telephone her astatine 4am trying to upwind her up and enactment the telephone down,” Lilly says.

"People thought we were joking." But, contempt leaving them each successful shock, Oliver is simply a overmuch loved summation to the household and has fixed everyone a caller lease of life.

Leanne says: "It's the astir astonishing beingness present we person Oliver. We consciousness truly alive! He's keeping america young and due to the fact that my different children are older, we person truthful overmuch clip for him. It's an astonishing experience. It’s unbelievable.”

The household are presently successful Puerto Rico connected a vacation they’d booked earlier October - truthful they had to adhd an other last-minute passenger, aft Oliver’s unexpected arrival. Lilly added: "We're each perfectly obsessed with him.

"Because maine and my sisters are older, we don't truly marque a fuss astatine Christmas anymore, but this twelvemonth it was magical due to the fact that we had Oliver. We emotion him truthful overmuch and my dada yet got his lad aft 26 years!.”

Cryptic pregnancies

• Surprise, oregon cryptic pregnancies, hap successful astir 1 successful 2,500 births - meaning determination are astir 300 annually successful the UK.

• In a cryptic gestation the parent is unaware until the precise precocious stages - oregon adjacent until the transportation - that she is pregnant.

• One per cent of women inactive acquisition “menstrual-like” bleeding during pregnancy, meaning they whitethorn not realise they are pregnant.

• While the NHS contraceptive injection is much than 99 percent effective, this does mean that astir 1 per cent of women utilizing it volition get large successful a year.