A Massachusetts woman called an ambulance after experiencing stomach pains she blamed on GLP-1 medication, only to give birth to a baby she had no idea she was pregnant with.
PEOPLE reports that 33-year-old Alysha MacDougall summoned an ambulance after suffering “excruciating stomach pains” that she put down to the GLP-1 medication she’d been prescribed for weight management.
Her husband Carl was following the ambulance in his car, but was on speakerphone with the ambulance crew. Then he got an update he wasn’t expecting:
“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?’”
“I didn’t think there was any possible way”
It turned out that MacDougall had been pregnant and had not realized, later saying, “I didn’t think there was any possible way. I wasn’t showing, I had PMOS, and any symptoms I had were typical side effects of taking a GLP-1.” MacDougall also claimed she’d taken several pregnancy tests before the birth and all had returned a negative result.
Her new baby, Julian, was born at just 22 weeks, making him a critically premature baby as he’d been carried for less than half of a typical term.
He was rushed to the NICU, where medical director Dr Jaclyn Boulais told ABC News he was “fragile, unstable, and needed meticulous care, including maximum ventilator support” and that “he [had] very thin, gelatinous skin, extremely small, and was requiring help, essentially, from every system.”
Dr Boulais estimated Julian’s chances of survival at just 15%, saying,
“It’s incredibly uncommon for babies of this gestational age to have no brain bleeding. Many of these extremely preterm babies born outside a tertiary care hospital have substantial bleeding, but nearly all have at least some. It’s one of the biggest markers of long-term neurological impact.”
Meanwhile, MacDougall was left grappling with becoming a mother with no financial, organizational, or emotional preparation. She said, “We were so worried about all the things we didn’t do in preparation for having a baby, because we didn’t know we were having a baby.” But she and her husband quickly devoted themselves to him, with MacDougall saying, “We’re gonna do whatever we can for Julian.”
In another dramatic birth story, a Canadian mother says she woke up in a panic during labor after a nurse could not find her baby’s heartbeat, only to discover that ‘he delivered himself’.
Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. After 154 days in the NICU, Julian has now been brought home, with ABC quoting MacDougall as saying,
“I never thought that I would have the opportunity to become a mom. So it’s just, like, fulfilling a lot of like little girl dreams that I think a lot of girls might have. 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.”
Dr Boulais praised the parents, saying they’re “very special in terms of being able to take on this incredible stress and coming from this place of entirely unknown territory and sort of immediately switching to this parent mentality and choosing positivity and really partnering with the medical care team to make sure that he had every opportunity to do well.”
Elsewhere, a couple who had agreed to be childless were thrown into turmoil when a pregnancy unexpectedly arrived, “my whole world tilted“.
Published: Jul 17, 2026 08:02 am