Student feeling 'run down' learns she's 37 weeks pregnant

Laura now lives at home with her parents and her son, Finn, now three. Photo / Facebook

A student who went to the doctor feeling a "bit run down" was shocked to learn she was pregnant - and weeks away from giving birth.

Laura Molloy, now 25, from Dublin, said she didn't have any obvious symptoms of pregnancy - such as a bump, morning sickness, or missed periods - and had even done two tests which both came back as negative.

During a visit to her GP Laura was stunned to be told she was 37 weeks along, and didn't have terminal cancer as she had feared, according to the Daily Mail.

Less than a month later Laura's waters broke and she endured an 18-hour labour, giving birth to her son Finn, now three.

Speaking on RTE Radio 1 documentary The Announcement, Laura said: "My initial thought was [the doctor is looking for] a tumour, I've got terminal cancer. I actually am dying. Then she said, 'I think you're pregnant'."

Laura wasn't convinced at first because she'd just done a pregnancy test in front of her doctor that had come back negative.

But the GP explained to the baffled student that because she was past 28 weeks there was a chance the hormone that gives you a positive pregnancy test has already left your body giving a negative result.

Laura was sent from the surgery straight to the Coombe Hospital for a full check-up, recalling: "I did the maths that's more than seven months pregnant.

"I've no bump, no morning sickness, no feeling of any movement. I thought "this has to be a mix-up". She is clearly not a very good doctor."

She had an ultrasound scan and the news finally sunk in when she heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time: 'I thought s*** I can't believe I am pregnant.

"I was in complete shock. I couldn't believe this was happening to me."

Laura, who had been with her partner Luke for two years by April 2015 is still with him now, it was after Christmas that she first started noticing she wasn't feeling well.

She was feeling bloated with her hands and feet swelling and her energy was waning.

"I started not to feel right, in college instead of studying I started to Google my symptoms. I feel heavy, but I don't have the balls to stand on the scales so I ask Luke if I've put on weight."

Luke, who works in a bank, says in the radio documentary: "Maybe I thought you had put on a little bit of weight, but it just looked like Christmas turkey weight."

By March 2015 Laura thought she was pregnant: "But I was still having my period and not having any morning sickness."

Laura, who was studying film and broadcasting at Dublin Institute of Technology at the time, was told that her bump measured at 17 weeks but the baby's femur length was measuring 37 weeks.

Her parents were speechless when Laura broke the news to them and Luke was equally stunned.

"I felt the myself collapsing and the world was spinning, and I asked how far along she was and much time we had, I couldn't get over the shock of it," Luke said.

Doctors later explained that the reason the bump was so small was because the foetus grew behind her placenta which was also why she could not feel the baby kicking inside her womb.

Laura was back at Coombe hospital when waters broke and her contractions began less than a month later.

She was in labour for 18 hours and gave birth to her son Finn.

"Three weeks earlier I was thinking about a holiday me and Luke were planning, now we're not having a holiday, but a baby.

"I'm going to meet this little person who's been hiding from me for all these months."

Three years later, the mother-of-one, who still lives with her parents, is planning on going back to college to study teaching.

Laura says she couldn't imagine life without him: "Five years ago I would never have imagined my life like this.

"But all I can say is I can't remember a world without Finn, and I certainly don't ever want to live in one without him."