A Massachusetts woman was overjoyed to bring her first baby home from neonatal intensive care five months after she gave birth in an ambulance, not knowing she was pregnant.
Alysha MacDougall, 33, and her fiancé, Carl Pina, 43, brought their son Julian home from Tufts Medical Center in Boston on June 29, after Julian spent 154 days in the NICU.
“Having him home is amazing,” MacDougall told ABC News. “We’ve been loving it.”
MacDougall didn’t know she was pregnant before she delivered Julian in an ambulance on Jan. 26, amid blizzard conditions.
At the time, MacDougall said she had been taking pregnancy tests, which were negative, and was seeing her doctor for polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, a condition that can impact fertility.
On the day she gave birth, MacDougall awoke in the early morning hours with “excruciating stomach pains” before she started bleeding and briefly lost consciousness.
The couple called 911 and while MacDougall was taken by ambulance to the hospital, Pina started driving to meet them there. On the way, he got a call telling him MacDougall had given birth.
Julian was born between 22 and 23 weeks gestation, less than half the time of a full-term pregnancy.
Dr. Jaclyn Boulais, medical director of the NICU at Tufts Medical Center, where Julian was transferred after birth, said when he arrived hours after birth, he was “critically ill.”
At birth, Julian weighed just under 1 pound, Boulais said. When he was discharged from Tufts Medical Center, he weighed 10 times that, at nearly 10 pounds.
Boulais said Julian went home on oxygen support, but overall, she said he is a “healthy baby.”