A 20-year-old woman says she gave birth just 17 hours after learning she was pregnant — a revelation she shared in a now-viral TikTok video posted on Friday, July 11.
Known on TikTok as Charlotte-Maddison, Charlotte explained she experienced a “cryptic pregnancy,” a rare situation in which someone doesn’t realize they’re pregnant until very late in the term — or even until labor.
Although she noticed some changes in her body, nothing raised red flags. “I gained a bit of pudge,” Charlotte said, adding that she had gone up two jean sizes. In a long-term relationship for over two years, she chalked it up to “happy relationship weight.”
“I was also going through a lot of stressful things in my life at the time, so kind of put it down to that, [and I] wasn’t really concerned,” she added.
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Charlotte was still getting her period and taking birth control, so pregnancy wasn’t even on her radar. On June 6, she visited her general practitioner to discuss a possible gluten allergy. During that routine appointment, her doctor ran a standard set of tests — including a pregnancy test.
To her surprise, the test came back positive. Based on the initial exam, her doctor believed she was in the early stages of pregnancy.
“[I] was probably freaking out a little bit [at this point], because I was like, ‘There’s no way that I’m pregnant,’ ” Charlotte recalled in her video.
She immediately called her boyfriend, and the two went for an ultrasound the same day. That’s when the real shock hit: the baby measured “38 weeks and 4 days” — just short of full term.
“At that point, you can pretty much understand [that] I kind of blacked out,” she said.
During that appointment, doctors also found an issue with her placental sack and told her she would likely need to be induced soon.
Charlotte was admitted to the hospital and delivered a baby boy less than a day later — just 17 hours and 21 minutes after finding out she was pregnant.
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“I didn’t really comprehend what was going on. I don’t know how else to explain it. It was definitely a crazy experience,” she said.
Looking back on the whirlwind experience, Charlotte shared, “Long story short, I’m happy [and] healthy. Me and my partner love being parents.”
Anticipating skepticism, Charlotte provided documents from the hospital and her doctor’s visit to support her story.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, cryptic pregnancies occur in roughly 1 in every 2,500 births. They’re more likely in women on birth control, in perimenopause, with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), or those who’ve recently given birth.
