In a scene straight out of the mid-2000s MTV show I Didn't Know I was Pregnant, a US woman has described the life-changing moment she gave birth to a baby on the toilet last month - without knowing she was pregnant.
Massachusetts woman Melissa Surgecoff told Today she thought she was experiencing bad menstrual cramps on the morning of March 8, which got more intense as the day went on.
The 38-year-old eventually told her fiancé Donnie Campbell to call an ambulance and tell them she was passing a kidney stone.
"The only relief I would get was sitting on the toilet," she said. "So I was in the bathroom, and I... couldn't sit still. I was screaming, I was trying not to be loud - like I didn't know what this was."
She said finally at one point she felt something rush out of her.
"I look in the toilet and I still didn't know what it was," she said. "And I thought I basically lost an organ because I didn't know!"
Her fiancé reportedly thought the mass in the toilet was faeces, before realising it was a baby.
"We were just kind of in shock and not expecting it, and all the sudden there's a baby in the toilet,'' he said.
He says he cleaned the baby using his sweatshirt, as he'd seen on television shows, which helped the infant to breathe.
"I kept watching his stomach and he kept breathing on his own and then it became more of a celebration," he said.
"I stood up and held him close to my heart against my body to keep him warm."
An ambulance arrived and took the new family to the hospital where everyone was pronounced healthy.
Now a mother to baby Liam, Surgecoff told Today there were "signs" she was pregnant, but says she had always experienced irregular periods and thought some weight gain was just down to lockdown.
"So if you look back on it now, yeah, there are clear-cut signs," she said. "Like my feet were swollen... my shoulders and upper body were swollen and just like, you know, gaining weight."
The family of three is now said to be doing well.
