When I first found out I was pregnant, I cried from pure joy. My husband, Mateo, swept me up and spun me around the living room like we were in a rom-com. We had been trying for a while, and one baby—maybe two if we were lucky—was all we had hoped for.
But around week 16, things started to feel… off. My belly was already huge. People at the grocery store began asking if I was due any day now. One woman flat-out asked, “Are there four in there or five?” I laughed, but deep down, I was nervous. I didn’t feel like a “normal pregnant” woman.
By the time I reached week 20, I couldn’t walk from the couch to the kitchen without gasping for air. My back ached constantly, and I could literally see my belly moving like waves under my skin. Mateo googled obsessively. I stopped looking in the mirror altogether.
At our anatomy scan, even the ultrasound tech did a double-take. “Hold on… I need to get the doctor,” she said, leaving the machine still on my stomach. Mateo’s eyes met mine, and he looked pale.
The doctor came in, stared at the screen, looked at me, then back at the screen.
“How many do you think are in there?” he asked gently.
I just stared at him. “Twins?” I offered, already knowing that wasn’t it.
He chuckled nervously, rubbed his neck, and said, “Let’s just say… this is going to be a very big delivery.”
Now the internet’s going wild over our story. Someone posted a photo of me in the waiting room, and it went viral. People are guessing—quadruplets, sextuplets, even eight.
But here’s the thing… I still don’t know the full count. Not really. Not for sure.
Weeks passed, and the bump kept growing like it had a mind of its own. I had three different doctors, six ultrasounds, and countless people trying to “figure out” what was going on. Every scan showed one baby—but huge. Like, off-the-charts huge. One doctor thought maybe it was a misreading, or that I had excess fluid. Another murmured about a potential growth disorder. One even suggested I might be further along than we thought, but my dates were solid.
Meanwhile, strangers online were dissecting every photo of me like I was some kind of celebrity pregnancy mystery. The comments ranged from sweet to absolutely unhinged. One woman wrote, “She’s carrying a football team.” Another said, “It’s definitely eight, she’s just not allowed to say.”
Honestly, all the attention made things worse. I started second-guessing myself. Some nights I’d lie in bed crying, wondering what was really going on with my body. Why was I so big? Why couldn’t they just tell me for sure?
Then, on February 18th, everything came to a head.
I woke up with a deep, heavy pressure in my pelvis, something I hadn’t felt before. We called the hospital, and they told us to come in. I wasn’t even nervous anymore—I just wanted answers.
A few hours later, I was prepped for a C-section. The baby had grown so large that my doctors didn’t want to risk waiting any longer. Mateo held my hand as they wheeled me in, and I’ll never forget the moment they lifted him up.
“One baby,” the doctor said with a grin. “But oh man, what a baby.”
Our son—just one baby—was born weighing 9 pounds, 8 ounces, and measured 22-and-a-half inches long. No twins. No hidden siblings. Just one big, healthy boy.
The nurses joked that he skipped the newborn stage entirely. He was alert, strong, and already trying to lift his head. One of the pediatricians chuckled and said, “He looks like he’s ready for kindergarten.”
And just like that, the mystery was solved. No multiple babies. No medical anomaly. Just a big ol’ baby who managed to confuse half the internet and every medical staff member we encountered.
In the end, it reminded me that every pregnancy is different. The internet can guess, doctors can speculate, but your body is going to do what it’s going to do. All that stress and worry over “how many,” and the truth was simple.