Alexis Swinney always dreamed of having an intimate setting for a birth — but she never thought when it finally happened, it would be in the front seat of a moving vehicle!
On the morning of September 5, 2018 Alexis knew her baby girl was going to arrive. She and her husband, Dominque, had been up all night dealing with increasing labor pains, so they started making plans for the big day. Before traveling to the hospital, the couple dropped off their 7-year-old daughter at school and piled their three young sons into the family SUV to visit Alexis’ midwife.
Yet, as Alexis was checked over my her midwife, they discovered the baby would be coming even sooner, as the pregnant mama was already seven centimeters dilated.
Alexis began screaming and writhing in pain, crouching over the front seat and bearing down. “What do I do?” she frantically asked her husband.
“I wasn’t nervous at all about the car moving because I honestly didn’t feel it moving,” Alexis recalls. “My husband wasn’t driving crazy. I told him to drive a little fast, but to make sure we were safe!”
But as they approached the hospital, Alexis soon realized they weren’t going to make it in time.
“The minute my water broke, I knew she was coming,” Alexis, who asked her husband to record the birth as it was happening, recalls. “Once her head started to come out. I haven’t done my research on breech births, so I panicked. But then I felt her little ear, then I pulled her out!”
Meanwhile, the couple’s 3-year-old twins and their 4-year-old brother all looked on in awe as their newest sibling arrived in front of them.
“They all three stayed completely silent — I’m not sure who saw what, but we didn’t tell them to not look or anything. It definitely wasn’t on my mind,” she explained.
“My 4-year-old was actually patting my face with a blanket that was at his feet. And both our 3-year-olds first reactions were to smile, and they both said ‘baby!’”
“My body isn’t swelled, and I’m not crying. I had my spouse and children with me, and we accepted all that happened for 5 minutes without interruption.”
“Our family has preferred a unique chaos,’ she added. ‘It was crazy. But it was Amazing.”
Her husband, Dominique, filmed the following heart-pounding video from the driver’s seat as their kids sat wide-eyed in the back.
The footage of the dramatic birth was later posted to the family’s Instagram page, and in it, Alexis is seen lovingly cradling her baby girl, whom they named Corbyn Hope, just moments after welcoming her into the world.
“There was something beyond special, about getting to deliver my own baby,” she wrote.
“No doctors or nurses, no lights, or busy people, no one interrupting a moment that should be the most special moments for families as they bring life into the world. The pain was there, but the love and tranquility that followed in those minutes we had to ourselves with our sweet child was more than I could have hoped for.”
“I honestly think that God allowed me to deliver safely in the car, instead of making it to the hospital, because He knew that my desire for a birth that was without interruption and full of hormones between baby and I, that desire was so deep. And something that the hospital just couldn’t provide for me. I witnessed my body take over and a baby be born into my hands.”
Today, baby Corbyn Hope is happy and healthy and hanging out with her four other siblings. After hearing about the family’s story, Jimmy Kimmel gifted the family a new van, a step up from their increasingly crowded SUV.
