Mom gives birth on toilet after being told to take paracetamol

A woman has described how she was told to take paracetamol when she phoned a hospital in Ystad, southern Sweden, in pain. Just moments later she gave birth to a baby in the toilet.

The Expressen tabloid reports that the woman, from western Sweden, was 31 weeks' pregnant when she started getting pains in the lower part of her stomach on a visit to southern Sweden to celebrate Easter.

She called a health advice hotline which advised her to go to hospital to rule out urinary infection. The general surgery in Ystad then referred her to the obstetrics and gynecology department which found traces of blood in her urine.

She was given medication for urinary infection and told to make an appointment with her midwife after the weekend, according to a report filed to Sweden's Health and Social Care Inspectorate seen by Expressen.

Later the same evening the woman contacted the hospital again, but a CTG and vaginal ultrasound did not show anything out of the ordinary, so she was sent home once again.

"We get home at 1.30am and I'm in so much pain now that my legs hurt," the woman writes in her report.

Her husband called the hospital again, explaining that his wife was in so much pain that she was unable to speak, but was told that she should take an Alvedon – a Swedish brand of paracetamol-based painkillers.

The woman explains in the report filed to the Health and Social Care Inspectorate that she then threw up and ran to the toilet where she had three contractions, pushed and gave birth to a son in the toilet chair.

"After 28 minutes the ambulances come and we go back to Ystad," she writes.