Photo: Alexis Swinney
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!
“I was in so much pain. Once we got into the car, I was just trying to make it,” Alexis, 24, tells PEOPLE. “I know my husband kept telling me we were almost there. I was thinking, ‘Okay, let’s try to stay alive and control this pain right here.’ ”
Alexis began screaming in the front seat as Dominique did he his best to drive her the 15 minutes from the nurse’s office to the hospital as quickly as he could.
Alexis Swinney
“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 got scared because I thought it was a butt — I hadn’t prepared for that. 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!” Alexis says, adding that she had previously planned to let the kids watch the birth at the hospital.
The family’s video has since received more than 61,000 views on Instagram, and Alexis says she hopes it serves as a reminder of the strength all women have inside of them.
“There’s some type of plan in this all. I didn’t set out to have my birth impact so many people, but if that’s what it does, then that’s amazing,” she says. “If this can inspire other women to know how strong they are, I’m all for it. Maybe it can bring a little good into this world.”
source: people.com
