Mom gives birth unexpectedly with help from 2-year-old son (Exclusive)

When a middle school teacher unexpectedly gave birth to her baby girl in the bathroom of her Wisconsin home last month, her children were by her side, offering sweet encouragement.

“At one point, when I looked down, he put his little hand under my chin and lifted my face up to look him in the eye,” mom Shannen Krahn, 31, tells PEOPLE of her son Max.

“Focusing on him kept my mind off the pain,” says Krahn, though she hopes the experience doesn’t have a negative impact on her son, who turned 2 earlier this month.

The birth experience was a surprising, but happy end to an easy pregnancy.

Krahn, a math teacher, was nearly 39 weeks pregnant with daughter Brooklynn Suzanne, her second child, when she stopped work for the day on Sept. 15.

When she left school she started to feel a little “discomfort”, but the pain was inconsistent and unlike the labor pains she had experienced with Max.

The mother-to-be told her husband Mitch, a supervisor at a chemical manufacturing company, to head out on his night shift and that she would keep him updated if she felt she needed to go to the hospital.

“I didn’t realize how quickly it would progress,” she says.

After she got to their house near Madison, she took a shower and realized her contractions were starting to pick up.

As she bathed her son, she began to time her contractions. Then she called her husband of six years. Although she wasn’t feeling “super worried”, she told Mitch, 33, he needed to get home so they could go to the hospital.

Krahn knew he was coming in 45 minutes and then called Mitch’s cousin, who planned to watch Max while they were gone.

As she waited for the other adults to arrive, she went to the bedroom with her toddler to grab her bathroom bag and pillow. She was in the bathroom when a “big contraction” hit and her water broke. For once, the scene was just like the one depicted in the movies.

“It was like a water balloon falling to the floor,” she recalls. “It was crazy.”

As Max looked at the bed, his mother took a few minutes to recover from the shock. At that point, her contractions were constant. Krahn says her 2-year-old son kept patting her arm and saying “mommy” from the bed.

“Yep, we’re fine. Mom’s fine,” she told her son as she urged him to stay where he was. “We’re good. We got this.”

She came to the bathroom and her young son followed her inside.

“I got down on my hands and knees,” says Krahn, who remembers thinking, “I’m not getting out of this bathroom without having this baby.”

She couldn’t call for help because she had left her phone in the kitchen. In fact, as the bell rang in the background, she pushed three times and gave birth to her daughter.

Through it all, Max was there, calling her name and gently touching her arm. He said, “Oh, honey,” when Brooklynn appeared.

“I got her on my chest and she let out a good cry,” Krahn says of the first few minutes after giving birth. “It was just a huge weight off my shoulders.”

Within five minutes she heard Mitch open the door with a confused, “Hello?” At first he did not know where his pregnant wife and son had disappeared.

“We made eye contact,” says Krahn, who remembers telling her husband, “Hey, we’re having a baby.”

The shock quickly wore off for both parents. The new mother was transported to the hospital by ambulance, while Max stayed at home with Mitch’s cousin.

After Krahn and her newborn were checked out, the couple received encouraging news. Their daughter — who got her middle name from Krahn’s late grandmother — weighed 7 lbs, 4 oz. at birth. Within 24 hours, the mother and child were discharged.

Weeks later, Max is still smitten with his new sister.

“He calls her ‘My baby,'” says the proud mom, who adds that her son loves to help hold baby Brooklynn and watch during baths and feedings. “He wants to know where she is all the time.”

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One of the proud mom’s favorite moments is when Max sits between her legs, propped up on a pillow, while she nurses Brooklynn in a recliner.

“We’re just sitting there cozying up, the three of us,” says Krahn. “As they say, your love doesn’t divide when you have more children. It only multiplies.”