Every Mom has a unique birth story.
Regardless of how a child comes into the world — vaginal, C-section, home birth or adoption – giving birth is memorable and magical.
However, the way that Maxwell Alexander made his appearance in to this world was nothing short of incredible — and that’s an understatement.
Jes Hogan, a mom of six, was due to deliver her last child in July of last year.
Although her pregnancy was drama-free, the birth of son Maxwell was anything but.
The birth photos were captured by Tammy Karin of Little Leapling Photography, and they’re simply amazing.
Karin (with Hogan’s permission, of course) shared the photos on Facebook to “demonstrate the beauty of birth even when things do not go remotely as planned.”
Hogan went to the hospital on Wednesday, July 19th after having contractions most of the night.
She told reporters that they went from almost 3 cm dilated to a 4 in the first hour of arrival.
But Hogan never moved beyond this point and they decided to go home to monitor her contractions.
That Sunday, four days after their initial hospital visit, the expectant mom continued to labor at home. Hogan says that she assumed she would know when it was time to go back to the hospital. “After all, this was my 6th baby. I should know these things, right?” she joked.
The Mom said she finally knew it was time in the middle of the night when she experienced one long, powerful contraction. “Travis, I think this is it,” she told her husband, who has been deployed since just after Max arrived.
And it was… and.luckily it was 3 am, and the roads were empty for the drive to the hospital. “As we neared the last turn to the hospital I began screaming that the baby was coming. He honked the horn rapidly as I screamed through the contractions and he pulled quickly into the ER drive,” she says.
They made it just past the second set of automatic doors in the ER.
Karin also arrived and yelled to the hospital staff that Hogan was going to have the baby. Immediately.
“I know at this point I said something to the effect of, ‘oh god, he’s here.’ Then I started to take my pants off because I could feel my body pushing the baby’s head out.”
Her husband then told her that the nurse that first reached them was supporting Maxwell’s head. “He still had his hands on baby’s head too, as well as my back while they laid us down. That same nurse gently removed his cord that was loosely around his neck. He arrived on the floor just inside the entrance of the emergency room at 3:38 am. Less than 5 minutes from the time my water broke at home,” she says.“It was my craziest birth, but also, the most perfect. It was not at all what I had planned, but it ended without any intervention, with a healthy baby, and amazing support people by our sides. It was beautiful and I’ll forever love every memory of it.”
Images via Leaping Photography