Woman finds out she’s pregnant after her toilet seat turned blue — then she found out why it happens

Not everyone keeps track of their menstrual cycles. Sometimes, people have conditions that prevent them from getting their cycles regularly, which makes it hard for them to know when they're pregnant. This was the case for 25-year-old Caitlyn Bradley.

The New York native suffers from celiac disease (a gluten allergy), so when she experienced some digestion issues, coupled with bloating and a fair amount of heartburn, she thought it was because of her condition. Also, she was on birth control pills because of which she had issues with her cycle. 

"I told myself I’d go to the doctor after the pandemic, due to fear of going anywhere near a doctors office during this time," she explained, in a now-deleted post on Reddit.

One day when she hit the loo, she noticed that the toilet seat had suddenly changed color. "We have a porcelain toilet seat in our downstairs bathroom that mysteriously turned blue the one day," Bradley mentioned. "Thinking it was my Young Living [toilet] cleaner I had just purchased, I tried scrubbing it off with no luck."

The stunned woman turned to Google and what she found left her in shock. "All that popped up when googled were blog pages after blog pages of people talking about how pregnancy hormones turn porcelain toilet seats blue!" Bradley shared. 

Immediately, she took a pregnancy test, and it turned out positive! 

"[It was the] fear of not knowing at first how far along I was and if the baby was okay," she explained. "My first thought was, 'Oh my gosh I need to see a doctor as soon as possible.'" As surprised as Bradley was by the outcome, her family was taken aback, too!

"I think the best way to describe everyone’s reactions about the baby is complete shock," she told CafeMom. "Shock because I was not showing up until this week."

When she took the test, she said she was slightly bloated but she definitely didn't have a baby bump, so when she was told she was seven months pregnant, she just couldn't wrap her head around it. 

"The day we told everyone my mother-in-law told me I did not look pregnant at all, let alone 30 weeks!" Bradly recalled. "Of course, I had to tell everyone why I was telling them so late – how I had no symptoms and the ones I did have mimicked my gluten allergy."

Irrespective of this, she just can't believe that a toilet seat led her to discover her pregnancy. "It’s just such a crazy story. A lot of people are just in disbelief when I tell them," she said. "Everyone is over the moon excited, but also just can’t believe how this all turned out!" Bradley added.

While there is no real reason for the seat to turn blue, Angela Ballard, a registered nurse with the International Hyperhidrosis Society, said that it could be due to a condition known as chromhidrosis.

"Chromhidrosis is a disorder of the sweat glands that usually manifests with colored sweat on the face, in the underarms, or on the areola of the breasts (the darker circle of skin around the nipples). Sweat may be yellow, green, blue, brown, or black. The colors are due to a pigment produced in the sweat glands called lipofuscin ... Lipofuscin is common in human cells, but for some reason people with chromhidrosis have higher concentrations of lipofuscin or lipofuscin that is in a higher-than-normal state of oxidation."