A 27-year-old mother from Perth, Australia, was ecstatic when her pregnancy results showed positive, but what followed what nothing short of a horrifying experience.
Lauren Knowles' supposed 'pregnancy' turned out to be a mass of cancerous cells, leading to her 'giving birth' all by herself in a hospital toilet, in order to expel the tumour out of her body.
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According to Daily Mail, Lauren was seven weeks 'pregnant' when she was met with the heartbreaking discovery of her bump being caused due to a deadly disease. She was diagnosed with molar pregnancy – a cluster of cells known as a gestational trophoblastic disease – and to top it off, hers was cancerous.
Lauren, who originally hails from Aberdeen, Scotland, said: "The tumour grew in my womb the same way a baby would, the same hormones were produced and my pregnancy tests always came back positive."
"There was no way that I thought it was cancer but after I started bleeding, I had further tests when I was seven weeks pregnant. The scan showed that the mass in my womb was cancer and I started chemotherapy straight away."
But, despite having the cancerous tissue removed, the tumour kept growing inside her even after the gruelling ordeal of chemotherapy. It wasn't until the moment Lauren felt the need to push the then pear sized tumour out of her body, that her torture ended.
"I lost all my hair and three months after starting treatment, I gave birth to the mass in the hospital toilets," she shared. "The mass was the same size as a baby at 17 weeks so it was a big tumour to push out with no assistance."
Agonising stomach cramps led to her 'giving birth' to the tumour and Lauren couldn't have been happier as it meant she was cancer free.
"I was so relieved when I saw the tumour down the toilet as I knew my ordeal was finally over. And after all my treatment, the light at the end of the tunnel was falling pregnant with Indi one year later."
The birth of Indi was all the more special to her because as doctors had warned her, the huge tumour had damaged her womb, implying she'd struggle to fall pregnant in the future.
But Lauren waited a whole year, as advised, to fall pregnant and finally, this time it was a healthy, beautiful baby girl who's 10 months old now.
"My whole pregnancy I was terrified that it would be molar again, so I wasn't able to enjoy the feeling of carrying a child. When we went to our first scan and saw the baby's heartbeat I couldn't stop crying because I knew it was real," shared Lauren.
Despite Indi's birth going smoothly, Lauren is determined to raise awareness about molar pregnancy.
"I want to give people hope that even in the worst scenarios, what seems impossible is still possible, whilst raising more awareness to molar pregnancy," she shared.
