Woman faked pregnancy for 9 months before allegedly cutting a friend's baby from her womb.

Everyone was convinced she was nine-months pregnant.

Warning: This post may be distressing for some readers. 

The excited parents-to-be posted ultrasound pics on their Facebook pages.

“Can’t wait to meet her,” wrote the soon-to-be-dad.

“lol my lil dimpled cutie pie” wrote the pregnant mum.

Friends and family gushed over the pics asking questions about baby showers and wondering what they needed.

“Not much” was the response as the happy couple posted a Facebook image of their cupboard filled to the brim with carefully folded clothes, tiny soft leather shoes and baby wraps all ready for the birth of their daughter.

“Auntie aun [sic] today her due day but she not ready to come out yet lol,” wrote the nervous dad to his Aunt Ann.

Ashleigh Wade, aged 22 and her long time boyfriend Angel Praylow were ready for the birth of their baby but, as Ashleigh told her landlord, a nurse, Ashleigh had suffered complications — placenta previa and things were a little worrisome.

Wade had support though; she had recently reconnected with an old schoolfriend Angelikque Sutton, also aged 22. She had sought Sutton out through Facebook as she too was also pregnant with a baby girl. Together the two women went shopping for baby clothes and went out to lunch as they bonded over the shared experience of pregnancy.

On Friday November 20^th,  Ashleigh Wade knew it was the day her baby was going to come.

The 22-year old from the Bronx in New York had plans on how her daughter would arrive. She called her friend Angelikque to her house. When she arrived, police allege, Ashleigh attacked her, stabbing her before carving Sutton’s unborn baby girl from her womb in a violent c-section and ripping the baby from her friend.

Ashleigh now had her baby girl.

Twenty-Two-year-old Wade then called her boyfriend of six-years Angel Praylow and told him she needed help, she had done something “really bad.”

The New York Post reports that when Praylow arrived home he was confronted with a bloodbath. Ashleigh’s childhood friend Sutton lay on the bed, blood strewn, barely alive, her placenta was on the floor and there, covered in blood, was a baby girl.

Praylow took the baby, wrapped her in a jacket, carried her outside and called 911.

When police arrived Ashleigh Wade, covered in blood, was still claiming that the baby was hers.

Wade sank a knife into Sutton multiple times, telling police she stabbed Sutton “as many times as she could”, CBS News reports.

She blamed the killing on Sutton, claiming the victim lunged first during an argument. She said she then went into labour shortly after.

CBS News reports that as Ashleigh Wade was taken into custody she was still screaming “it’s mine”.

Tragically, while Sutton’s baby girl survived, Sutton did not. The 22-year old died in hospital on Friday night.

Police are now  slowly piecing together how Ashleigh Wade managed to fool her partner, family and friends for nine months.

Angel Praylow’s Facebook page is filled with delight at the prospect of becoming a father with no trace that he was anything but convinced his girlfriend was pregnant.

Their landlord, Angela Parris, who works as an OB/GYN nurse told The New York Post she was so convinced that Wade was pregnant she had bought them a card and was about to go shopping for a gift for the new baby.

“I thought she was pregnant. I didn’t know she wasn’t,” said Angela Parris,

“She had me fooled… She was heavy so I couldn’t tell.”

“She said she was supposed to deliver on Monday, and I texted her and asked if she had the baby, and she said, ‘No, not yet’.”

Online baby registries listed under Wade’s name also indicated she was expecting to give birth to a baby girl on November 16.

A Babies “R” Us registry listed 47 items she needed, including a changing pad cover, nappy bag, bibs and bottles, reports The New York Times.

CBS reports that while everyone else was fooled police said they had “no knowledge Wade had been pregnant or was currently pregnant” and that she “did not appear visibly pregnant when taken into custody”.

The shocking story, making front-page news in the US, is distressingly similar to that of Michelle Wilkins who had her unborn baby cut from her after being attacked by a woman pretending to sell her baby clothes online in April.

Wilkins’s survived but her unborn baby did not.

While Angelikque Sutton’s baby faces a life without her mother, Ashleigh Wade remains in a psychiatric hospital. She has been charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon and committing an “abortional act” that caused a woman’s death.

For help: Lifeline: 13 11 14