Human pregnancies normally last around 9 months, but one Indonesian woman has been making news headlines in her country for claiming that she gave birth just one hour after experiencing pregnancy symptoms.

Heni Nuraeni, a 30-year-old woman from Mandalasari, a village in Indonesia’s Tasikmalaya Regency has become the main topic of conversation in her country, after it was revealed that she gave birth to a baby boy after allegedly experiencing pregnancy symptoms for about an hour. Heni claims that on Saturday night, July 18th, her belly started growing and she started experiencing painful cramps which she immediately associated with child birth, having previously given birth to two children. The problem was that not only had she been oblivious to the pregnancy, she also hadn’t made love to her husband in 19 months…

I was at home, and nothing was out of the ordinary,” Heni recalled about the night of her childbirth. Suddenly, I felt something moving on the right side of my abdomen and the cramps started. I asked a neighbor to take me to my father’s house and about an hour later we called a midwife and I gave birth.”

Despite gaining some weight in the months leading up to the childbirth, the 30-year-old woman claims that she experienced none of the symptoms she had when she gave birth to her other two children, including morning sickness, protruding belly or even the ceasing of her monthly menstruation. Nuraeni insists that she had her period every month for the last nine months, which doctors attribute to a hormonal imbalance.

But the most incredible part of this already incredible story is that Heni Nuraeni and her husband Erik hadn’t been intimate for 19 months, since she gave birth to their daughter. They had apparently abstained from sex after the birth of their second child, for medical reasons, which was confirmed by Zalkap Drasman, the head of Puspahiang Sub-District.

It is this small detail – the lack of intercourse – that makes the doctors reluctant to provide the simplest explanation – a case of cryptic pregnancy, where the mother doesn’t know that she is pregnant.

 

“This is what makes this incident strange but true, but we are grateful because with God’s will anything can happen,” said Zalkap.

Heni Nuraeni’s alleged one-hour-long pregnancy has been garnering a lot of interest over the last week, with reporters, medical experts and officials from all over Indonesia visiting the young mother to learn more stories about her seemingly miraculous childbirth. All the attention has apparently caused Heni a lot of stress, and her family have asked for some privacy.