A STUNNED mum delivered her daughter’s child at home and neither knew she was pregnant.

The first time Wendy Howard, 53, realised her 25-year-old daughter was pregnant was when she started to push during labour.

The unexpecting mum had experienced some nausea and had gained weight over the previous months but attributed the symptoms to other factors.

She was, in fact, at least seven months pregnant.

Chaos reigned at the family’s home in Great Horkesley when the pregnant mum-of-two, who asked not to be named, began experiencing severe back and stomach pain.

Wendy, who owns a cattery and works as a chef, said: “I phoned 999 and was talking to the operator.

“She was lovely, she asked me a lot of questions and asked ‘Could she be pregnant?’

“I said ‘I’m not sure’.

“So the operator said we’ll treat it as if she is pregnant and go through it as if she is in labour.”

While her daughter stayed on the phone with the operator, Wendy rushed next door to get her neighbour to watch her granddaughter Eden-Rose, who is two.

“I was gone about three minutes and when I came back in she was screaming for me. I ran upstairs and she said ‘I need to push’.”

“I asked ‘Push what? What are you pushing?’”

No more than five minutes later, Wendy delivered her daughter’s surprise baby boy.

But things took a turn for the worse as the baby turned blue and Wendy began to panic.

“The operator said to get another towel and to keep rubbing him vigorously,” she said.

“I’m running around the house trying to get towels. I started rubbing and rubbing him and he started to go pink again.

“She asked me to get a shoelace and I just said ‘Where I am going to get a shoelace?’ We had to tie the cord off.

“These trainers had knots in the end of the shoelaces, so I was trying to yank the shoelace out of her trainers while looking after the baby and my daughter.”

The ambulance then arrived and two crew members rushed in to help.

They provided the baby with oxygen but when his mother sat up, she lost consciousness.

The baby, named Grayson, his mother and grandmother were taken on to Colchester Hospital in two ambulances.

Wendy watched over Grayson as doctors frantically worked on his mum.

“Every time they tried to get a line in my daughter her veins collapsed,” she said. “There was about four and five people in there. They were trying to work on her and then all of a sudden she crashed and all the alarms went off.

“From then on I have never seen so many doctors and consultants in my life. There must have been about 20 people in that room.

“There was too much going at that moment for me to really think anything, I knew she was in good hands and they were doing everything they could for her.”

The mother had suffered an infection and had gone into septic shock, which can be fatal.

Her blood pressure was falling and her body was shutting down.

But after administering blood transfusions and antibiotics, doctors were able to save her.

The recovering mum said: “It was all a big shock but you realise you have another child now.

“You have to go into that mother mode.

“You’ve now got someone who depends on you.”

She joined Wendy in praising the medical teams who had saved her life and the strangers who helped to furnish the family with new baby items after a frantic social media appeal.

“If it wasn’t for the paramedics and the NHS staff I would be dead,” she said. 

“I wouldn’t be here and he possibly wouldn’t be here either. I owe them everything.”