www.kgun9.com/story.php?id=1249UNEXPECTED BIRTH SURPRISES "INFERTILE" MOTHER
By Myrna Membrila
Last Friday a Vail woman gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, but she never knew she was pregnant until the delivery.
"I never felt her if I would have I would have been so happy. So happy! I just would have enjoyed her every day I would have known she was there but I never knew," said Dawn Pannell.
As a teenager -- a doctor told Pannell she'd never have children.
"I really didn't know. The only sign I had was the kidney hurting in the back and then all day Friday it was really hard right here on my left side they told me it was probably because of my kidneys," she said.
On Friday, Pannell blamed the excruciating pain on the chiropractor she'd seen that morning.
"He thought he adjusted to me where he had obstructed a bowel so he told me to take some Milk of Magnesia with a heating pad and rest and I couldn't even sit I couldn't sit, I couldn't stand I couldn't lay I couldn't do nothing," she said.
When the pain persisted she tried an enema.
"When I sat down on the toilet I just got this big pressure that I needed to push really bad and I pushed and when I pushed it was this big rush of water and then I set there and I was just yelling and screaming banging on the bathroom doors it's relief it's relief!"
The commotion brought her husband to the door.
"All of a sudden I heard a little cry 'wah, wah' and I kind of looked at him and I said did you hear a baby cry? And he goes what and so we stood there a little bit longer and we heard it again and I stood up and straddled the toilet and the baby was sitting in the toilet she was sitting straight up looking at me, she said. "And so I picked her up by the shoulders and put her in my arms and wrapped my shirt around her and told him to call 9-1-1."
She held on to that baby from her bathroom in Vail all the way to a Tucson hospital bed.
"The umbilical cord had broke so I just wrapped it around my finger and held my finger in there with her and that's how we came to the hospital with my arm with her in a towel until we got here," she said.
The baby, named Ariel, is currently in the neonatal unit but Pannell expect her to come home Thursday.
Most people have months to prepare-- Pannel's only had a few days. And yet she says everything she needs is already waiting for her.
"Well thank God I have a great family, my in-laws are beautiful people," she said.