Pregnant UK soldier gives birth on the frontline, didn't know she was pregnant

Pregnant UK soldier gives birth on the frontline, didn't know she was pregnant



A UK woman serving in Afghanistan has given birth to a son, without realising that she was pregnant!

A Fijian-British servicewoman has given birth to a baby boy, five weeks premature, on the frontline while serving as a gunner in the Royal Artillery in Afghanistan. The woman, who had been deployed with the 12th Mechanised Brigade since March to help provide covering fire for troops fighting insurgents, did not know she was pregnant and was astonished when she reported to medics for stomach pains only to be told that she was about to give birth. The birth took place in the Camp Bastion field hospital just days after the Taliban launched a deadly attack on the UK's main base in Helmand. On the evening of Sept. 19, a Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said:

"We can confirm that on 18 September a UK servicewoman serving in Afghanistan gave birth in the Camp Bastion field hospital to a baby boy. Mother and baby are both in a stable condition in the hospital and are receiving the best possible care.

"A specialist paediatric retrieval team is being prepared and will deploy in the next few days in order to provide appropriate care for mother and baby on the flight home."

The spokesman added: "It is not military policy to allow servicewomen to deploy on operations if they are pregnant. In this instance, the MoD was unaware of her pregnancy.

"As with all medical cases, when the need arises, individuals are returned to the UK for appropriate treatment/care."

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A paediatric team from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford will travel to Afghanistan in the next few days to provide care for the soldier and her son on their RAF flight home.

The birth has stunned military chiefs and led to calls for extra medical checks on women who are sent to the warzone.

Almost 200 UK troops have discovered they were pregnant at war since 2003 – forcing commanders to send them home, however, this is the first time a UK soldier has given birth to a baby in Afghanistan whilst on active duty.

Around 500 British women are currently on duty in Afghanistan. They can serve in any unit except for those whose primary role is to "close with and kill", or in other words engage in hand-to-hand combat with, the enemy.

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Camp Bastion's is a £10million field hospital which, despite its location, is one of the best equipped in the world with portable X-ray machines, an operating theatre, CT scanner and an intensive care unit capable of treating up to 20 seriously-ill patients.

A military source has told the WA Times:

"This has left us completely gobsmacked. You prepare yourself for dealing with war wounded at Bastion – not a mother giving birth to a baby. It is the talk of the camp.

"This is a very unusual case. The mother deployed not realising she was pregnant and had no idea she was pregnant until she gave birth. She has not done anything wrong."

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Lieutenant Colonel Andrea Lewis, commanding officer of the field hospital, said:

"This is a unique occurrence, but my team is well-rehearsed in the unexpected and they adapted brilliantly to this situation.

"I am pleased to report the mother and baby are doing well and we are all delighted at the outcome."

The Fijian soldier had passed her tough pre-deployment training, which included a gruelling eight-mile march and five-mile run, without an inkling that she was already several weeks' pregnant.

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A senior Army insider said:

"It is bizarre that she didn't feel some side effects of the pregnancy. She is obviously pretty fit and strong. The strains and demands on soldiers working on the frontline make it surprising she didn't realise.

"But the conditions of deployment, the different diet, the heat of the Afghan summer, the different hours of working, mean that many soldiers feel a little odd and put it down to the change of environment.

"A lot of the medics are reservists and work in hospitals back in the UK so the concept of someone giving birth is not completely alien to them. But they do not have paediatric equipment here so they had to make do as best they could."

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Major Charles Heyman, who edits the British Army handbook, said the incident was astonishing. He said:

"Commanders need to start thinking very, very carefully about what sort of medical examinations female soldiers have before they deploy on operations.

'A simple urine test would indicate if someone was pregnant. The Army now needs to tighten up its procedures."

Since 2003 at least 70 British servicewomen have been sent home from Afghanistan after discovering they were expecting. And at least 102 female soldiers were evacuated from Iraq after it was found they were pregnant.

Last year the Mail reported that Private Kayla Donnelly, then 21, from Penrith, Cumbria, also served in Helmand unaware that she was pregnant.

She had conceived before going to Afghanistan as a machine-gunner and thought her weight gain was due to high-calorie Army rations. It was only when she began experiencing contractions whilst on leave in Tenerife that she realised she was pregnant. Her son, Josh McMillan, was born just two weeks after Kayla returned home from Afghanistan, having served on active duty for six months of her pregnancy.

Stories of women who come to the end of a pregnancy without realising that they are pregnant are surprisingly common. There's even a U.S. documentary series chronicling the stories of such women by Discovery Health.

There are many reasons why some women don't notice that they are pregnant, including a history or irregular menstrual periods, obesity, breakthrough bleeding or periods whilst pregnant, stress, inaccurate use of birth control, negative results on a home pregnancy test, dieting or fitness fanaticism or a small foetus, carried towards the back of the womb.

Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/20/soldier-gives-birth-camp-bastion

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1357444/British-soldier-Kayla-Do...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1239443/combined

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/9554528/British-soldier-g...
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