Army soldier Brooks Lindsey just barely missed his daughter’s birth, but while sitting on the floor of the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport he got the next best thing: A FaceTime call that let him see her first moments.
According to CNN affiliate KTVU, Lindsey is a member of the Mississippi National Guard, 2d Battalion, 114th Field Artillery Regiment, and lives in Brandon, just east of Jackson.
His wife Haley Lindsey told Love What Matters she wasn’t supposed to deliver for another week, but her doctor told her last Thursday that she needed to be induced. Brooks was at Fort Bliss in El Paso and planned to fly from there to Dallas, and then on to Jackson, Mississippi.
The expectant father hit a flight delay in Dallas, but Haley Lindsey told Love What Matters that it actually worked out for the best.
“Without that delay Brooks would have been in the air and unable to FaceTime,” she said. Instead, he watched the birth live on his phone while his mother secretly recorded his reaction from inside the delivery room.
Millie Fritz Anne Lindsey was born on Friday. According to her mother, she was only a few hours old by the time dad made it to the hospital.
“He picked her up and held her for five minutes and kept saying ‘wow I can’t believe we just had a baby,'” she said.
A video of an emotional Brooks Lindsey watching the birth, surreptitiously filmed by a fellow passenger in the airport, has amassed more than 200,000 views in a few days. In the post, the passenger said other travelers gave the soldier his space but were overjoyed when they realized the baby had arrived.
“I never want us to forget about our soldiers who serve us every day and the sacrifices they make,” the passenger wrote.
Lindsey’s regiment congratulated the family on Facebook with a sweet picture of dad and baby.
Haley Lindsey re-posted the viral video of her husband’s airport reaction on her own Facebook page, with fond words and tiny hearts. CNN has reached out to her for more information.