A Vancouver Island woman who had no idea she was pregnant is rushing to make room for baby after the little girl's surprise arrival this month.

Twenty-five-year-old nurse Emily Ratcliffe thought her back was hurting from lifting heavy furniture as she and her husband moved into their new Crofton home on Oct. 1. But the pain soon moved to her belly, and when her water broke a short time later, there was no mistaking what was going on.

"I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I'm in labour.' No doubt about it, I've done it three times before and I knew what was going on," Ratcliffe told CTV News.

Her husband called 911 and a close friend and fellow nurse attended to the delivery. Baby Mariah was born less than 20 minutes later, and the paramedics arrived just in time to cut the umbilical cord.

"I might have actually pushed two times," Ratcliffe said.

But reality didn't sink in fully until she was in the back of an ambulance and looked down to see a baby in her arms.

"That's when I realized, wow, this isn't a dream," she said.

The mother-of-four says it's normal for her weight to fluctuate, and so she didn't suspect anything was up when she started getting bigger as the pregnancy progressed. She assumed the nausea she was suffering from was just part of an ongoing struggle with food sensitivities.

Other family worries also may have distracted Ratcliffe from the baby growing inside her. Her daughter Grace has been sick with cancer, and between visits to doctors and therapists, there have been few chances to concern herself with anything else.

"There's just no time for Mom to stop and think, what might I need?" she said.

Ratcliffe says she was embarrassed that she didn't connect the dots and realize what was going on.

"The fact that I'm a nurse, people probably think that I'm just ridiculously either stupid or naïve," she said. "But here I am, silly as it may be."

She says she used to laugh at women in similar situations on the TV show "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant."

Despite all that, Ratcliffe says she wouldn't trade the experience for anything. However, she says there will be no fifth baby for the family.