I remember seeing one of these stories years ago on Springer or Sally or something...
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1596265.php?tftf
http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/homepage/abox/article_1596265.php?tftf
Friday, March 2, 2007
Baby comes as shock
The mother didn't know she was pregnant until she had carried the fetus to full term.
By SCOTT MARTINDALE
THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER
ORANGE ? April Branum went to her local emergency room Monday night complaining of stomach pain and emerged with the biggest shock of her life. She was pregnant with a full-term fetus.
Doctors, who discovered the baby when they took X-rays of her abdominal area, immediately sent Branum to UCI Medical Center in Orange for prenatal testing.
The fetus's lungs were fully developed, the heartbeat was strong, and no defects were detected. The baby was ready to be delivered.
Two days later, the first-time mother gave birth by C-section to a healthy, 7-pound, 7-ounce boy named Walter Scott Edwards III.
"Usually you can tell if you're pregnant, but with me, I couldn't tell," the 39-year-old Garden Grove resident said Thursday, pointing to her belly and explaining that, at about 420 pounds, she was so large that no one ? including herself ? could tell she had carried a baby to term.
Branum says she never had morning sickness and did not feel the baby kick, at least not until after doctors told her what was inside her womb. "If he kicked, I didn't feel him kicking," she said.
The layers of fat padding her belly likely insulated the baby's movements, said her physician, Dr. Afshan Hameed.
"When she moved or laid down, she had so much weight of her own that the tiny movements of the baby didn't register as well," said Hameed, a UCI obstetrician-gynecologist and cardiologist.
Branum, who lives with her fiancé Walter Edwards II in the Garden Grove house where she grew up, gave up hope years ago of having any children with him. She stopped having a menstrual cycle about two years ago ? likely a complication of her obesity ? and had grown accustomed to her lifestyle working as a baby sitter of six children.
Meanwhile, she was struggling with an unsuccessful gastric bypass surgery she had about seven years ago. The surgery did not help her lose as much weight as hoped, her doctor said.
Branum and Edwards, who plan to marry by the year's end, met in a Costa Mesa karaoke bar about four years ago and have been engaged for 2 1/2 years. They have adopted four dogs together, including their puppy Junior, which they added to the family in September.
"I was blowing money on dogs," said Edwards, 46, who installs home theaters for a living. "You need the money most when you're having a baby."
The timing of little Walter's birth couldn't have been worse for Edwards, who also was wrapping up the purchase of $30,000 worth of music equipment to open his own recording studio.
His son's birth, at 2:15 p.m. on the last day of February, was the day Edwards was supposed to finalize the deal and pony up the cash.
"My son is born on the same day as the biggest business deal of my life," an incredulous Edwards said Thursday afternoon from his fiancée's hospital room, still making frantic phone calls to try to extend his deadline by a day.
The challenges are not over for the couple, who learned they were having a baby less than 48 hours before his birth. Branum had a scant 24 hours to give notice that she would be giving up her baby-sitting job. And little Walter has no nursery, no clothes and no diapers.
Friends and neighbors already have come to the couple's rescue, offering a crib, a changing table and other baby accessories. But fashioning a nursery from the couple's computer room will take about a month, they said.
"We're just glad to have an extra room," Edwards said. "The baby's going to stay in the master bedroom with us for a month."
Although Branum is a professional baby sitter, she's not expecting motherhood to be easy.
"I've been baby-sitting since I was 14, but it's going to be totally different because it's our own," she said.
"It's going to take two to three months to recuperate from the shock."
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