Photo: courtesy Jen Lilley
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the Hallmark star, 37, details the “crazy” story of the night shewelcomed daughter Jacqueline “Jackie” Gracewith husband Jason Wayne, which she says was “night and day” compared to when she gave birth to her daughterJulie, 3 next month.
Lilley, who also adopted sons Kayden, 5, and Jeffrey, 3, from foster care in 2019 and 2020, respectively, says she initially didn’t know if she was in labor because it was her “fourth week of prodromal labor.”
“Prodromal labor is a little different than Braxton Hicks. They’re real contractions. They hurt as bad as labor contractions, but they’re not consistent,” she explains. “So when the actual night came, I thought it was just more prodromal labor, especially because my contractions did not time out properly.”
When lying back down and trying to slow down her contractions in the bathtub didn’t work, Lilley realized it was time to wake up her husband to go to the hostpial. At the time, Lilley says she thought she still had “hours to go” before going into labor.
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PHOTO: courtesy Jen LilleyPHOTO: courtesy Jen Lilley
Lilley then called her nanny Ashley to come over and watch her other kids while she and Wayne headed to the emergency room.
“So I’m telling my husband like, ‘Hey, these [contractions] are not that bad. I’m just kind of overreacting. Just keep driving safe,’ " she recalls. “We pull up to the emergency room — let’s see, she was born at 1:12 a.m., so [it was] 7 minutes before we pulled up, 1:05 a.m.”
Lilley says she sent her husband inside the hospital to find someone to bring her upstairs in a wheelchair. After Wayne was unable to locate any hospital personnel, the actress got out of the car between contractions and ran over to a security guard named Bob.
“So I say to this guy, Bob, words I’ve never used. I say, ‘Hi, I’m in labor — hardcore.’ And he just looks at me like yeah, right. He gets a wheelchair and he is taking his darn time. And he is like, ‘Go ahead and sit down in the wheelchair.’ And I’m like,' I don’t want to sit right now.' The idea of sitting was the worst idea you could ever present to me. So I sit down in the wheelchair and he’s like, ‘Okay, what’s your last name? Like, here’s the forms.’ I’m like, ‘I’m preregistered Bob, we got to get upstairs, now.’ "
L. Cook
“The midwife happened to be at the nurse’s station. I’m still thinking that I’m not fully in labor yet. And all the nurses and the midwives were like, ‘Get her in a room, get her in a room.’ I don’t even think I made it into an actual labor and delivery room,” says the actress.
Once in the room, Lilley says she climbed onto the hospital bed on all fours when “all of a sudden the midwife says, ‘Well, she has quite a bit of hair,’ " which Lilley thought was a joke.
“And so I think that the whole birth, the whole pushing part, probably took 10 to 15 seconds… It was so fast,” says Lilley. “It was crazy.”
Jen Lilley
source: people.com
