As she waited, lying on a couch in the ER hallway, 22-year-old Kayla Fustamante was convinced she was suffering from a ki.dn.ey st.o.ne. She was in p.a.in throughout her shift at the restaurant she worked at, and as soon as she learned, she rushed to the hospital to find out what was wrong.
“At first, they didn’t pay much attention to me,” says the young mother, “perhaps because I looked too casual in my work clothes, but I thought I was going to ᴅ.ɪᴇ.”
In fact, before doing the ultrasound, the doctors thought she just had a ʀᴜᴘᴛᴜʀᴇᴅ ᴄʏsᴛ – she had recently been diagnosed with an ᴏᴠᴀʀɪᴀɴ ᴄʏsᴛ. The ultrasound, however, showed something that no one expected to see. A doctor, other than those who had examined her, approached her and said, “You are 38 weeks pregnant and today you will have a baby.”
Kayla was in for a sʜᴏᴄᴋ since she just wasn’t ready to be a mother. Of course, she was also sʜᴏᴄᴋᴇᴅ because she was pregnant and didn’t understand anything: “I had various ɢʏɴᴇᴄᴏʟᴏɢɪᴄᴀʟ issues and it was not surprising that I didn’t have a period for many months, while the weight I gained recently, I thought was because I had a bad diet – also because of my job at the restaurant.”
As soon as she got over the sʜᴏᴄᴋ, the 22-year-old began to worry about the child she was carrying, since, not knowing that she was pregnant, she did not lead a careful life at all – she ate casually and drank ᴀʟᴄᴏʜᴏʟ. “The scariest thing about it,” she recalls, “was the worry that my child wouldn’t be healthy because I didn’t know I was carrying it.”
In the wheelchair, en route to the delivery room, Kayla called her family to let them know. Hearing their voices and how much they loved and supported her made her feel a little better about the plunge into the unknown that was just beginning.
On her bed of p.a.in, it took her just 12 minutes to give birth to a healthy baby girl.
After being discharged from the maternity hospital, Kayla also informed the father, her ex-boyfriend, as they had broken up 3 months ago. Initially, the couple remained separated, since he was already in a relationship. But things went smoothly and today, 5 years later, they are married and expecting their second child.
