“It didn’t occur to me that it could be labor, because it didn’t feel like labor,” she would say later. “It just felt like I needed to stay in bed.”

Starting at 4 on Tuesday morning — hours before a scheduled doctor’s appointment — a slight feeling of unwellness began to wake Brittany repeatedly. By 5:45 a.m., his own sleep disrupted, Brian gave up trying and walked over to his son’s room to help him start the day.

“I was changing my son and putting his pants on when I heard a commotion in back,” he said. “I could tell something was up, and she called me and said, ‘I need you to get in here right now.’”

“Brian called us, told us Brittany felt like pushing, and I said, ‘OK, we’ll be right there — hang up and call 911,’ and he did,” recalled Twyla Stewart, the mother of Brittany O’Connell.

Ready or not, the family’s newest member was arriving. After getting a 911 dispatcher on the phone, Brian quickly laid towels on the easy chair where his wife was sitting, the only preparation possible as the seconds ticked away.