On Jan. 25, Alysha MacDougall, 33, was involved in a minor traffic accident in Massachusetts while running errands. She says she felt fine afterward, so she decided not to go to the hospital. Then, the following morning, she woke up with “excruciating stomach pains.” Soon after, she began bleeding, lost consciousness, and later that day gave birth to a baby—despite never even knowing she was pregnant.
According to Good Morning America, Alysha never even made it to the hospital before giving birth. She delivered her son in the back of an ambulance at just 22 to 23 weeks of pregnancy, which is barely halfway through a full-term pregnancy. Because of that, the baby spent the next five months in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
Around the time she was unknowingly pregnant, Alysha had been taking pregnancy tests and making trips to the doctor for polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Reportedly, the condition can cause irregular menstrual cycles and increase the likelihood of a cryptic pregnancy, where a woman is unaware that she is expecting.
The father was very confused
Alysha’s fiancé, Carl Pina, 43, still vividly remembers the shock of that day. He said that when Alysha became seriously ill that morning, they called 911 and she was taken away in an ambulance, with neither of them having any idea they were about to become parents. His plan was simply to drive to the hospital and meet Alysha and her mother, who had accompanied her in the ambulance.
Then he received a phone call from the hospital. Carl told GMA, “I’m listening to her mother on speakerphone with the hospital. They said, ‘We’re just letting you know that Alysha’s doing great and the baby’s OK. It’s a boy,’ and I just sat there. I’m like, ‘Did I just hear that right?'”
Mother and baby were later transferred to Tufts Medical Center. Dr. Jaclyn Boulais, the medical director at the hospital, urged caution and explained to the new parents that their son had arrived “critically ill” and would require intensive care for the foreseeable future. She said, “He was intubated on a specialized ventilator that we use for preterm infants. He [had] very thin, gelatinous skin, extremely small, and was requiring help, essentially, from every system.”
The parents said that from that point forward, they chose to remain positive and spent as much time as they could at the hospital with the son they had now named Julian. Alysha said, “We’re like, ‘We’re gonna do whatever we can for Julian until, if the baby shows us that it’s too much for him, then we’ll revisit.'”
He’s a miracle baby
Boulais explained that in cases like Julian’s, the survival rate is often around 15%. She added that doctors found it “remarkable” that there was no bleeding around his brain and that he was feeding well. Over the following months, the hospital treated his lungs, eyes, and blood pressure, and gradually Julian began to pull through.
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Reportedly, Julian weighed just under one pound at birth. By the time he was finally discharged from the hospital, he weighed 10 pounds. Now that their baby is home, Alysha said, “Our family’s complete. I think Julian is a testament to our resilience and that we can overcome everything. So he’s just a miracle baby.”
