New parents Dara and Eric Crouch waited right up until their baby’s arrival to find out the gender. When mom, Dara, learned she had given birth to a boy, her reaction was more than surprised.
The labor and delivery nurse’s immediate reaction to her son’s birth was captured by family photographer Neely Ker-Fox.
Dara decided to leave her son’s gender a surprise since her favorite births — as a labor nurse herself — have been ones where the parents don’t know whether the baby will be a boy or girl.
Plus, she said there hasn’t been a boy born on her side of the family in 50 years. Dara already has a daughter, and was certain that she would be having another one.
“My husband thought from the beginning that it was a boy. I was not so convinced. I had this weird connection to my daughter’s clothes, and since their birthdays would only be three weeks apart, I knew I could reuse them,” she told.
“It never really set in that this baby could be a boy until just a few minutes before he was born. I started freaking out because I had never been around a little boy and didn’t know much about raising one. When my midwife, Melissa, held him up, I was in complete shock!
I was so excited, and so in love! I couldn’t imagine it being any other way!”
When the midwife announced, “It’s a BOY,” the whole room erupted into tears of joy.
The baby boy named Liam was born weighing 7 pounds and 15 ounces, and joins big sister, Neyland, 3.
Dara Crouch said she thinks the photos are great. “We have something to look back on; had we not have a photographer in the room we would’ve never seen that.”
