Jade Roper Tolbert and husband Tanner Tolbert welcomed their second baby on Monday — and the little one’s arrival was one for the books.
“It was wild,” Jade tells PEOPLE about her son’s birth which did not go at all to plan.
In fact, their newest addition’s arrival was so quick that she didn’t have time to get to the hospital and instead welcomed the baby on the floor of her bedroom closet.
“It’s surreal. I’m still having trouble processing it,” the former Bachelor star said Wednesday.
Jade, who has been married to her former Bachelor in Paradise costar Tanner for three years, (their daughter Emmy is almost two) was still around two weeks away from her due date when her water broke.
“Her water actually broke at 9:16pm, as we were actually watching The Bachelorette,” Tanner, 32, tells PEOPLE.
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“I had been having Braxton Hicks contractions so I felt like the baby was coming soon, so much so that my mom came from Nebraska early,” recalls Jade.
Tanner adding: “We weren’t shocked that he came early, but we were shocked that he came so fast.”
“With Emmy, Jade labored for seven hours. We called the midwife, we got the baby bag and Jade was going to take a quick bath to calm her body down. We weren’t going to take hours, but maybe 20-30 minutes.”
But the baby had another plan.
“I thought I was going to get in the bath and then we’d go,” says Jade, also 32. “We were waiting for Tanner’s mom because she was coming to watch Emerson. But then I got out of the tub and my contractions were so intense I couldn’t even keep on top of them.
“I started pacing in the bathroom and found myself in the closet trying to think about getting clothes on. Then I yelled for Tanner and I was like, ‘Tanner it’s happening now!’ He came in and tried to get me dressed. He put me in a T-shirt and his gym shorts. I was just in a pain and labor fog.”
Tanner rushed to her side in the hopes of getting her to the hospital. “My whole mindset was I’ll carry her if I need to but we need to get to the car so we can drive,” the now-father-of-two says.
“And Jade is like, ‘No Tanner, I can’t. I can feel the head.’ He had already dropped down to the birth canal. Once she convinced me it was happening, I was like, ‘Oh s—.’”
Then, “Tanner’s mom came in the room,” says Jade. “I was screaming and I was terrified. Then I told Tanner to call 911.”
Within minutes, “the baby was crowning,” Tanner recalls. “The dispatch lady told me to get some towels and to go down and catch the baby if it happens. I looked down and there was a full head of hair. He was as crowned as crowned gets! So, the lady on the phone told Jade to not push until the ambulance arrived.”
Meanwhile Jade, “was bent over a bench on my knees, holding the baby in,” she says. “Tanner’s mom had a towel and her hand on top of my hand and Tanner is behind her with another towel ready to catch the baby.”
Once the ambulance arrived, it took one push before baby boy Tolbert had made his entrance at 10:31pm, just over an hour since contractions began. The little boy was born weighing 7 lbs, 9 oz. and is 20 inches long.
“One of the main paramedics caught the baby and I cut the cord right there in our closet,” says Tanner. “But we didn’t waste a lot of time because we wanted to get mom and baby on the gurney to the hospital.”
Luckily, the baby was fine, “but in the moment I was freaked out,” says Jade. “We weren’t prepared for a home birth!”
Now, Jade says she’s focused on recovering- and enjoying precious time with the newest addition, who doesn’t have a name — yet, but so far is looking like Dad.
“Because it was such a fast labor, and my body went through so much in such little time, my recovery has been a little bit harder than it was with Emmy, but we’re just relaxing and just bonding with our baby.”
And ultimately, “I’m really grateful,” says Jade. “I mentally kind of lost it at one point. But luckily, I had a really great team behind me. They were my strength in the moment. And it just feels so right to have our son here. It feels like he’s been a part of our family forever.”
Much like their son’s arrival, the road to baby number two wasn’t as easy as they had been expecting.
They revealed to PEOPLE that they tried for 10 months before conceiving their son, with the help of the Ava bracelet, which Jade, who is a paid sponsor, wore at night to track her fertile days. (The bracelet works by tracking five physiological signs in the body, including temperature, pulse rate and breathing rate to detect where a woman is in her cycle with 89 percent accuracy).”
Jade first announced her second baby on the way on Instagram in late January, sharing a pair of family photos taken on the beach in which the mom-to-be was holding up a strip of ultrasound photos.
“Baby #2 is adding to our crew!! We are overjoyed our bundle of love will be joining us in August!” Jade wrote. “We’ve been dreaming of you for a while now, and you are already loved beyond imaginable, sweet baby.”
Tanner previously admitted that regardless of whether the spouses ended up having a boy or second girl, he hoped they’d welcome a son someday. “I want to at least have one [boy],” he told PEOPLE. “We joke and I tell her that she’s going to have to keep on trying until we get that boy.”
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