10 Guys On the Exact Moment Having a Baby Made Them Super Emotional

1. "I thought I got pretty emotional a few times while my wife was pregnant. But it didn't really compare to the actual birth of my daughter. I teared up a few times thinking about having a kid and a family while my life was pregnant. But I'm pretty sure when she was born my brain melted and my head just evacuated every tear it had. And I never cry." — Derick, 32

2. "There was a moment where my wife and I had a scare… our baby was fine, but we wound up at the OB and had to get a scan. It was pretty early in the pregnancy and I don't think I had really thought of the baby as anything other than 'the baby.' I guess my paternal instincts hadn't really turned on yet. But when we were waiting for the doctors and weren't sure what was going on, I remember really being afraid. It wasn't just a baby, it was my baby. I'm happy to report he's now two years old and doing fine." — Alden, 34

3. "I think the first time it really hit me that this was a journey I was going on was watching my wife in our nursery sing to the unborn baby. I don't know what it was about that moment, but I just remember thinking, 'eventually she's going to be singing to a baby that's outside the womb.' It sounds so stupid, but that was my first real moment." — Sean, 35

4. "I was building the crib. And it was a huge pain in the ass. We wanted to make sure it was ready to go just in case, but our due date was still a few months out. And I'm crouched on the floor, and I'm sweaty and I'm frustrated and I'm thinking about how I wasted hours of my Saturday dealing with this shit. And then it was almost like a little voice came in and reminded me I'm really doing this for my kid and I better get used to it. But, like, in a nice way." — Joe, 33

5. "It was during a talk I had with my dad and just realizing all the hard work that was going to go into having this kid and then realizing that my parents did all that for me. I'm not going to lie, I got a little choked up. I always appreciated my parents, but I just felt like I had a whole new perspective suddenly." — Jim, 31

6. "I got sucker-punched when I was cleaning up the baby's nursery. My wife and my whole family had gone kind of crazy and bought a lot of things for our daughter early. So I was putting away clothes and I guess I hadn't realized just how tiny they were. I realized that she was this tiny little thing… I think I was basically expecting like, a one-year-old to come out. It really hit me." — Zack, 30

7. "If I'm being totally honest, it was a few days after he was born. I was excited and emotional during the birth but I was sort of running on adrenaline then (water broke during the middle of the night). So I was all over the place. It was when I was holding him and he fell asleep that I just lost it." — Brian, 32

8. "He was the first grandkid in our family, so everyone was excited, but I think it was seeing my hard-partying younger brother get excited about being an uncle. It was a slow build-up, but I think knowing that even he was freaking out about it was what made it feel real if that makes sense." — Christopher, 31

9. "Second ultrasound. The first one, you just see a little spec, basically. It's tough to look at that and really appreciate that it's your baby. But the second one? It's your child in there for sure. It's crazy." — Rick, 29

10. "We actually had to get an ultrasound really late in the pregnancy because our son was so big they wanted to see if a vaginal birth was dangerous. So for those of you who haven't had any kids, you really don't usually get these in the last month unless there are extenuating circumstances. Anyway, we asked the tech to turn on the '3D imaging' and we basically got to see our son's fully-formed face in the womb. I'm pretty sure I said 'holy shit' in the hospital. I'm not sure what I said, honestly, I was just fixated on his face. That was the realest it had felt at that point." — Kevin, 34

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