Contact: Johanna Dasteel, Source: LifeSiteNews.com
A 33-year-old Minnesota marathon runner found herself racing to the delivery room rather than the finish line on Monday. Crippled with back pain after a 10-mile training run on Sunday, Trish Staine thought she had suffered an injury. Doctors found, however, that she was in labor.
That came as a shock to her. She didn't know she was pregnant.
After spending more than 24 hours suffering debilitating back pain, all the while going about regular activities such as attending her son's basketball game and her daughter's short play, Staine finally decided she needed to go to the hospital.
"I felt like I was dying. I didn't know what was going on," she said.
Staine's husband, John, was not at home with Trish when she decided she needed to see a doctor, so he called for an ambulance that took her to the emergency room. Upon examination, the doctors stunned the couple with news of a fetal heartbeat.
"I said, `No, no, that's impossible,'" said Staine.
During Staine's nearly eight-month pregnancy, she didn't gain weight and never felt her baby move.
In fact, her husband observed that it seemed she was losing weight during her marathon training, with her face visibly thinning out.
Even more bewildering was the fact that her husband had previously undergone a vasectomy for sterilization.
"He's still in shock," Staine said of her husband, John. "Everybody is teasing him."
According to WebMD.com, 1 in 100 vasectomies fail within five years, allowing pregnancy.
Within what seemed, to Staine, only a matter of minutes after finding out she was pregnant, she was face to face with her daughter.
At 3:25 pm on Monday, she had given birth to a 6 pound, 6 ounce, 18.9 inch-long baby girl.
The couple named her Mira, short for Miracle.
Mira was born five weeks premature,and will remain under observation at the hospital.
Doctors predict she will be home with her family some time next week.
Trish and John have five other children, ranging 7 to 20 in age. Trish is stepmother to John's three oldest children.
The couple also have two additional foster children and run a transitional foster-care program for young men called the Genesis Project.
Trish still plans on running in Grandma's Marathon, the half-marathon she had been training for when her labor began on Sunday. It takes place on June 22nd.
This time, her newborn baby girl will be waiting to see her after she crosses the finish line.
