Opening up. 

As Bachelor Nation fans know, former Bachelor Ben Higgins married the love of his life, Jess Clarke Higgins, in November 2021 and the two announced last summer that they are expecting their first child together — a baby girl. 

Last week, Ben officially joined the girl dad club and shared the exciting news that their daughter Winona (Winnie for short) finally arrived! 

Now, the new parents are opening up on Ben’s “Almost Famous Podcast” to share Winnie’s birth story for the first time. 

Jess revealed that they checked into the hospital on a Monday evening, but she wasn’t in active labor at the time, so they gave her medicine and a balloon in her cervix to help her dilate. 

“My nurse told me, she was like, ‘You can do it without an epidural’ because I wasn’t dilated at all,’ Jess said. “She was like, ‘If you get an epidural, you can’t get up for who knows how long.’ And I’m actually glad I didn’t because I ended up laboring for 36 hours, so I was happy to be able to get up.” 

Jess continued, “Tuesday afternoon, we were sitting chatting with my parents and then all of a sudden I was getting the worst pain and contractions ever, so we called in the nurse to get my epidural started. And so this is where the action happens; it’s been kind of boring up to this point.”

Jess and Ben revealed that as soon as she got an epidural, Jess’ blood pressure dropped and she felt like she was going to pass out. 

“Then [Winnie’s] blood pressure dropped and we lost her heartbeat for like 10 minutes,” Jess said. “They flipped me on all fours, so I’m on all fours in my hospital gown and like 10 doctors come rushing in. It turns out this is very common and not as big of an emergency as we thought it was, but it was scary… They were getting ready to roll me back for a C-section.” 

The new parents then reassuringly shared that soon after that, both Jess and Winnie were fine and she was ready to push around 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday. 

“Jess and I kind of had a birth plan, tentatively, where I was going to DJ,” Ben revealed. “And so Jess would go through and push and rest and then be like, ‘Okay, next song.’”

Jess chimed in, adding, “Ben DJ’d, I pushed for an hour and a half almost, and she came out to Rihanna singing ‘Please Don’t Stop the Music.’ And all the nurses were laughing because she was wiggling her head.” 

Ben and Jess then revealed that afterward, they listened to some soft worship music and fell asleep together for an hour and a half as a new family of three.