Jes felt that her pregnancy with her sixth baby, the family's first boy, was unpredictable from the beginning — and her instincts were spot-on! Although she began experiencing contractions on July 19, 2017, they didn't progress much, so she labored at home, enduring contractions until they got more frequent and painful, in the early morning hours of July 24, when her water broke. Feeling panicked that she wouldn't make it to the hospital on time for Max's birth, Jes got into the car barefoot with her husband Travis, and texted her birth photographer, Tammy Karin.
After laboring intensely in the passenger seat, Jes and Travis finally made it to the local hospital, where they ran into Tammy. Just as Jes walked through the ER doors, Travis and Tammy screaming for someone to help them, she could feel that Max was coming and pulled down her sweatpants.
"I could feel my body pushing the baby's head out," Jes wrote in a post to Tammy's blog. "I reached down and could feel his head crowning with my hand. I looked at my husband and said, 'Travis, catch him!' Without any hesitation he did just that as I felt my body involuntarily pushing his head the rest of the way out. At that moment Tammy began snapping away! Then the nurses came rushing down the hall. It was a blur at this point, they reached us, helped me lay down just as my body began to push again."
A part-time ER nurse, who happened to be an OB at another hospital, made her way to them as Max's head popped out, and with her first and only intentional push, she was able to completely birth her baby boy. Her son was born right on the hospital floor just 25 minutes after her water broke at home.
Looking back on that day, Jes recalls her husband's demeanor throughout the entire ordeal. "She could see on her husband's face that he was calm and happy," Tammy told POPSUGAR. "She felt so close to him in that moment and trusted him with her and their baby's life. She loves looking at the pictures and seeing his smile as he instinctively reached in to support her during the delivery."
"It was my craziest birth, but also, the most perfect," Jes wrote. "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."
See Max's whirlwind entrance into the world in the stunning photos Tammy was able to capture of his unique birth.
