New mum Alice Payne gives birth in her sleep

According to a new mum, doctors and midwives were "amazed" to witness her give birth to her son while she was asleep. Photo / Stock image, 123RF

A first-time-mum from the UK has claimed she "napped" during the birth of her son.

Alice Payne, 23, from Derbyshire in the UK, told The Sun that after a monitor misread her contractions and she was given medication to help her sleep, she woke up to find she had almost completely given birth.

According to Payne, the doctors and midwives at Royal Derby Hospital were "amazed" to witness the private tutor birth her son while she was asleep.

While the hospital hasn't commented on the claims, Payne explained: "Because the contraction monitor wasn't reading me properly, doctors didn't realise that I was as far along as I actually was. So I was given some drugs to let me nap for a couple of hours, but thirty minutes later they realised I was ready to push."

Payne was induced at 38 weeks after it was found her son had stopped growing. While he was deemed healthy, doctors made the call to bring forward Payne's birth date to avoid potential complications.

But 24 hours after initial attempts to induce Payne showed no effect, she was injected with hormones and hooked up to a machine to monitor her contractions.

At this point, she asked for some pain relief and fell to sleep. According to Payne, the machine didn't correctly alert the medical team in time and when they realised that she was ready to give birth, they were concerned she was too relaxed to do so naturally.

While they were considering an emergency C-section, Payne's husband Jonathan began talking to his sleeping wife, encouraging her to start pushing. She reportedly started to respond in her sleep, only waking up for the final 10 minutes of the birth before going back to sleep for another two hours.

"I remember a nurse trying to put Philip in my arms, but I was going to sleep again, only to wake up two hours later to properly meet my son."

Payne says while she's glad to have been spared the pain of labour, she does wish she "had been more present" for the birth of her first child.

"Now when he's older and asks me, I'll have to tell him I nodded off."