Baby Maxwell was born less than 25 minutes after his parents arrived at the hospital

Every mother has a birth story. No matter how a child comes into the world — vaginal, C-section, home birth, adoption, or with an epidural surrounded by doctors — giving birth is memorable and magical. But the way Maxwell Alexander made his appearance was nothing short of incredible — and that’s an understatement.

Jes Hogan, a mom of six, was set to deliver her last child in July of last year. Although her pregnancy was mostly drama-free, the birth of son Maxwell was anything but. The birth photos were captured by Tammy Schmit of Little Leapling Photography, and they’re simply stunning.

Schmit (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 first went to the hospital on Wednesday, July 19th after having contractions most of the night. She tells Scary Mommy they went from almost 3 cm dilated to a 4 in the first hour of arrival. But alas, Hogan never moved beyond this point and they decided to go home to monitor her contractions.

That Sunday, a full four days after their initial hospital visit, the expectant mom continued to labor at home. Hogan says 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.

She 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.

Hogan’s water suddenly broke and she said she was certain she would be having this baby at home. But her husband was insistent they would make it to the hospital. “His level of preparedness and the calm he had is something I’m still in awe of. He walked me down the hall, grabbing my shoes as we hurried out the door,” she said.

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.

Hogan and her husband made it just past the second set of automatic doors in the ER. Schmit had 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 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 25 minutes from the time my water broke at home,” she says.

In the end, baby Maxwell was born exactly as he should have been. “He was 6 lbs 7 oz, 20 inches long. Our son. Our last baby. Our only boy. Our smallest and quickest delivery. It’s still surreal,” 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.”