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Ready or not, Mom, here I come

The couple had taken steps to limit their family to two kids. But No. 3 is a welcome surprise.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published June 2, 2006

	[Times photo: Brian Cassella]
	Amelia Enriquez, 26, smiles while holding her newborn at St. Joseph's Women's Hospital on Thursday afternoon.

TAMPA - Amelia Enriquez's first pregnancy was horrible. She gained 75 pounds and found herself bowed by the pain, swelling and nausea.

"I wanted her out," Enriquez said.

The second time, things went a little better. She gained 30 pounds but didn't have the morning sickness, and labor was just five hours, not 12.

The third time? It was so incredibly easy, Enriquez had no idea she was even with child until a week before she went into labor.

Though it may seem implausible that a woman would not know she is pregnant into her 38th week of gestation, Enriquez and husband Osvaldo said their experience is proof.

Happy with their station as parents of 5-year-old girl Bianca and a now-14-month-old Sebastian, the couple had decided to call it quits on the babymaking front.

Osvaldo had a vasectomy in October. In March, Amelia got her period. In April and May, she didn't. Perhaps the vasectomy didn't take, they thought.

Minor back pain was the only symptom Amelia noticed, although she'd gained about 10 pounds on her 5-foot-4 frame. A billing agent for BayCare, she chalked that up to lots of dining out.

So Osvaldo picked up a home pregnancy test at Publix. The results weren't clear, so they scheduled a blood test.

On May 22, a doctor confirmed they would be parents again. Amelia, the doctor said, was maybe three or four months along. But five days later, an ultrasound showed something else.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" the doctor shouted as she examined the ultrasound. "You're not three to four months! You're 38 weeks!"

She'd been pregnant since September, doctors said. Amelia would be giving birth any day.

On Wednesday morning - after hastily shopping that weekend for diapers, wipes, bottles and a two-seated stroller - Amelia's water broke. She'd never even felt a kick.

Three hours and three pushes later, out came the baby they're now calling Osvaldo Jr. (though they had so little time to think about a name, even that wasn't a completely sealed deal Thursday afternoon.)

"He's a miracle baby," Enriquez said, cradling her surprise 7-lb. 10-oz., 21-inch bundle of joy, born Wednesday at St. Joseph's Women's Hospital.

"This is like a dream I haven't woken from," said Osvaldo, as he tended to his wife and new baby in their second-floor hospital room. "Everything is so fast. It's like a roller coaster; you don't have time to think."

If the couple had known, maybe Amelia wouldn't have moved four to five pallets of tiles for her parents' home renovation.

Perhaps she would have skipped that vacation to New York and passed on helping her relatives move heavy boxes into their new home.

Maybe she wouldn't have gone tubing in Ocala last month. And she definitely wouldn't have gone four-wheeling for four hours two weeks ago.

In spite of everything Amelia and Osvaldo Enriquez didn't know - the precautions they didn't take, the prenatal care she didn't get - doctors say the red-faced infant with squinty blue-greyish baby eyes is perfectly healthy.

Thankfully, Amelia doesn't drink or smoke.

The couple said they can't ask for anything more. Having a healthy child, said Osvaldo, a maintenance employee for a boat company, is "the best thing that can happen to a person in the whole world."

They're not sweating it.

"He's here," Amelia shrugged happily. "You can't put him back. He's meant to be here ... He wasn't planned, but he's more than welcome."

[Last modified June 2, 2006, 08:29:04]