'She Would've Died': Bachelor in Paradise's Jade Roper Tolbert Opens Up About Daughter Emerson's 'Surprise' Arrival

Emerson Avery is now safe and sound in her parents’ arms, but before her birth, Tanner Tolbert and wife Jade Roper Tolbert had a few hurdles to clear.

In a new 23-minute vlog, the Bachelor in Paradise alums tell the story of how the now-7-week-old came into the world, starting with her mom’s water breaking at 3 a.m. the morning of her birth — four weeks early.

“I was using a midwife and I wasn’t allowed to deliver at the birth center at 36 weeks,” says Roper Tolbert, 30. “Thirty-seven was the starting point. If before, I was going to have to deliver at the hospital and that was one thing I did not want to do.”

She then timed her contractions for about an hour in the tub before waking her husband, grabbing something to eat and crawling back into bed in tears. “I was like, ‘I don’t want it to happen yet. I’m not ready,’ ” Roper Tolbert recalls.

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RELATED VIDEO: Jade Roper Tolbert Shows Off Push Present from Husband Tanner – and Reveals How It Represents “Little Miss Emerson”

 

The couple didn’t have a hospital bag packed or the nursery fully ready, but they made their way to the hospital — where Roper Tolbert was able to labor in a tub, as she had envisioned, while Tolbert, 30, supported his wife.

“I will never forget the feeling of the baby’s head come into the birth canal,” she remembers. “It is the most intense pressure but it’s the coolest feeling. I was someone who definitely had a lot of pain … I was probably scaring the people down the hallway because I was screaming.”

Their daughter was born perfectly healthy, and her unexpected arrival actually turned out to be a blessing. Roper Tolbert’s midwife told her there was a knot in the umbilical cord — something that “could’ve cut off all nutrients to Emerson and she would’ve died,” explains the new mom.

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RELATED: Bachelor in Paradise‘s Jade Roper Tolbert Details the Night of Her 7-Hour Labor: “I Kept Telling Myself I Can Do This”

Roper Tolbert wrote a short blog about the birth, mostly sharing snaps from her “whirlwind” seven-hour labor experience — plus “a million” photos of the new family of three right after Emerson’s arrival.

“The true knot that had been tied tight in the umbilical cord,” she wrote, sharing the image of the cord. “We are very lucky she came early or her nutrients, blood and oxygen could’ve been completely cut off from her in the womb from the knot.”