By Crazy Monday

An aspiring half-marathon runner attributed her unbearable back pain to a two-hour training session before giving birth a day later. In an incident that would clearly be frowned upon in our country, the lady was clueless of her impending newborn.

Trish Staine, 33, says she had no idea she was pregnant before her surprise birth. The mother of three from Duluth, Minnesota said she hadn’t gained any weight or felt foetal movement in the months before. And besides, her husband had undergone vasectomy.

Denial

When doctors told her that her pain was actually due to an impending birth, Mrs Staine says she was in denial.

“I said ‘no, no, no, that’s impossible,” Staine said from her Duluth Hospital room. “I definitely thought I was done having kids,” she joked.

Staine and her husband, John, have a daughter, seven, and a son, eleven. She is also the stepmother to John’s three boys, aged 17, 19 and 20.

Mrs Staine said she ran for about two hours on in preparation for the Garry Bjorklund half-marathon on June 22.

“I had a sore back Sunday evening. I had taken a hot shower and was dealing with it,” she said. “On Monday morning, I woke up and had more back pain and as the day went on, it got worse. I thought I should go to the ER (emergency room). I thought I ruptured a disc or pulled a muscle.”

Unbearable

But she soldiered on, watching her husband play basketball at noon and going to her daughter’s short play. When Mrs Staine got home, she thought a bath might help her pain.

As she talked to her husband on the phone, Mrs Staine said her pain was becoming unbearable. Her husband called an ambulance.

“I felt like I was dying. I didn’t know what was going on,” she said.

During the emergency room examination, Mrs Staine and her husband were stunned to learn medical staff had detected a foetal heartbeat. She was whisked to the delivery room and in what she said seemed like five minutes later, her daughter was born. She weighed 2.7 kgs and was 48 centimetres long.

Mrs Staine said her husband has a good sense of humour.

“He’s still in shock. Everybody is teasing him,” she said.

“It was like a dream,” the new father said of experience. “I wanted to make sure it was real.”

Born about five weeks early, the Staines expect they will be able to take their baby home in about a week, a girl they have named Mira, short for Miracle.

If Staine makes it to Scenic Highway 61 starting line in 17 days, consider it just another miracle for the Staine family.