On Feb. 4, 2019, the Watch What Happens Live host welcomed son Benjamin Allen via a surrogate. “I was in the delivery room. I had been hoping that he would have a full head of hair, and he really overdelivered,” Cohen, who posed alongside his newborn for his PEOPLE cover story, told Editorial Director Jess Cagle. “That was the first thing you see, the head of hair coming out. And I was amazed.”
After cutting the umbilical cord, Cohen shared skin-to-skin contact with his son for the first time. “He was so alert for the first two hours. His eyes were wide open. He didn’t cry; he was just calm,” the new dad said. “I kind of have no words for it.”
The rapper, who shares daughter Stormi with girlfriend Kylie Jenner, told GQ that he was in the room when the reality star gave birth. “Hell yeah! It was crazy,” he said. “I was there through the hell… the epidural and s—. Crazy.”
During an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Scott also revealed that Stormi’s grandmother Kris Jenner helped him keep his cool during the birth. “She held me down, because it was so scary. This was actually my first delivery room,” he said. “So, she was like walking me through this process. [There’s], like, this thing called the placenta that I’ve just been hearing about. Oh, my God — so I was fearful of that, but I cut the umbilical cord and she held it down, mama KJ. She’s the best.”
For Evan and Ashlee Simpson Ross, the day their daughter was born is one they won’t be forgetting anytime soon — for more reasons than one. The spouses spoke to PEOPLE at the launch of their unisex Zadig & Voltaire line (called Jagger Snow, after their 2½-year-old daughter), where they recounted the hilarious events surrounding their little girl’s July 2015 birth. “Probably our parents coming in before it was time to come,” Ross said of the most memorable moment from the day. “I was like, ‘What are y’all doing?!’”
“While [Ashlee] was having the baby, we said we were going to do it just us, but then we saw both our parents behind the curtain watching,” he added. “Also, those nurses can’t stop my mom! Like, Diana Ross just walks in.”
The actor shared some delivery room advice for fellow dads after welcoming his third daughter, Tiana Gia Johnson. “I was raised and surrounded by strong, loving women all my life, but after participating in baby Tia’s delivery, it’s hard to express the new level of love, respect and admiration I have for [girlfriend Lauren Hashian] and all mamas and women out there,” he wrote in a sweet Instagram post.
“Word to the wise gentlemen, it’s critical to be by your lady’s head when she’s delivering, being as supportive as you can … holding hands, holding legs, whatever you can do,” the actor continued. “But, if you really want to understand the single most powerful and primal moment life will ever offer — watch your child being born. It’s a life changer and the respect and admiration you have for a woman, will forever be boundless.” Johnson is also dad to Jasmine Lia, 2, and Simone Alexandra, 16.
The Rampage star recently revealed to PEOPLE that he takes his hands-on parenting seriously — to the point that he helped deliver both of his kids with wife Hilarie Burton.
“We didn’t use doctors, we used a midwife [with son Gus, 8, and daughter George, 9 weeks], so I delivered both of my kids,” he said. “The first time I didn’t know, I was shocked that I was part of it. I thought I was going to hold the leg, tell her to hopefully breathe and I wasn’t ready when I took my position. This time I was a little bit more prepared and got in and got her out immediately. As soon as her head breached I reached in there, grabbed her by the cheeks and got her out. Hilarie was over it, so it was awesome. I got to deliver both my kids, for real, it was cool.”
In an unexpected turn of events, Seth and wife Alexi Ashe welcomed their second son in the lobby of their apartment building on April 8. The comedian recounted the unbelievable story a day later during an episode of Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Once his wife realized she wasn’t going to make it to the hospital, they spent a moment debating: lobby or elevator? Before Seth could make a choice, Alexi got down on the floor of the lobby. “I called 911 and over the course of a minute conversation, I said, ‘We’re about to have a baby — we’re having a baby — we had a baby,’” Meyers said.
He got emotional when speaking about how strong his wife had been, but quickly played off the tears by joking, “I’m getting choked up thinking about how brave I was.”
After taking Carson Daly’s advice to eat before joining wife Behati Prinsloo into the delivery room, The Voice judge did just that, resorting to binging on various foods, including cheeseburgers, before the birth of 1-year-old daughter Dusty Rose.
“So [Behati] kind of went into labor throughout the day, and it was beautiful. I was eating a lot though,” he said, recounting the hilarious September 2016 story to host Jimmy Kimmel. “We finally go to the hospital, I’ve put back an unbelievable amount of food. Like basically bursting at the seams, I was gonna s— my pants.”
“Also, my wife is in labor and it’s the lamest thing to be when your wife is going to be having a baby and you’re like ‘I got to take a s—.’ That’s not, in any way, a viable complaint. So you got to keep it inside, literally and figuratively. It was brutal,” Levine remembered.
“I waited, doubled over in pain. Finally, the baby came it was beautiful and amazing. And the second coast was clear, I took one of the nurses aside and I was like, ‘Look you got to find me a bathroom.’ And there was one a foot from the bed.”
The Bridesmaids actor divulged hilarious details about his wife’s home birth. O’Dowd, who welcomed son Valentine with wife Dawn O’Porter in July 2017, dispelled rumors that he had delivered the newborn.
“That’s probably overstating it … I caught him,” he said during his appearance on Live with Kelly and Ryan. “We didn’t know if it was going to be a boy or a girl. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of new information when a baby comes out.”
He added: “I caught him and my wife was like, ‘What is it?’ And I said, ‘It’s a baby!’”
The actor decided to get a little humorous when wife Blake Lively was in labor with daughter James, now 3. “I jammed a little Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On,’” he shared on Late Night with Seth Meyers. “It was like steak knives coming out of her eyes. Just like, ‘Are you f—ing s—-ing me right now?’” But according to Reynolds, Lively was just as playful as him for the majority of the birth. “She was a mercenary … I think I just caught her right in the middle of a contraction,” he said. “She was pretty much making jokes the entire time.”
During a Chelsea Lately appearance, Tatum talked about getting emotional while awaiting the birth of daughter Everly, 4, with ex Jenna Dewan. “I probably went to the bathroom like four times and had, like, a crying fit, like, ‘I don’t know what to do,” he said.
The dad gave even more details about the delivery room in a later Vanity Fair interview. “It was crazy. You feel helpless,” he said. “We like to think of ourselves as big, strong men, and we could handle whatever situation. And reality is [that women] are so much stronger than we could ever be. There’s a reason why we weren’t given that job, evolutionary or whatever … [Jenna] is a warrior. She did it as natural as you can. [As a man], you’re basically a cheerleader. ‘Come on, baby, you can do it.’ I would’ve tapped out in the first.”
Cannon dished on ex-wife Mariah Carey‘s unconventional delivery room request on The Gayle King Show. “Now my wife wanted to make sure that when the babies came out, that they came out not only to a Mariah Carey song, but a live performance from Mariah Carey — her Madison Square performance of ‘Fantasy’ — so they came out to a round of applause,” he said of twins Monroe and Moroccan, now 6.
The Guardians of the Galaxy star recounted his now 5-year-old son Jack’s emotional premature birth during a speech at a March of Dimes celebration. “Anna [Faris] woke me up in the middle of the night and she told me that her water had just broken. It was two-and-a-half months early. Oh, baby. Ready or not,” he shared. “He was 3 lbs., 12 ounces. Anna got to hold him for a moment and then it was off to the NICU — the neonatal intensive care unit. 3 lbs., 12 ounces. That’s a decent size bass. Very small for a human …
“The only people allowed to touch him were his mom and me, unless you were wearing gloves. We did this amazing thing they call ‘skin-to-skin’ — it was just the best feeling I ever had. It’s just what it sounds like. My little boy was laying across my neck and chest feeling my heartbeat and feeling my love, and I played him country music and I sang to him and I made him promises … in that moment … you know, about … just about what kind of dad I wanted to be, and I just prayed that he’d be here long enough and he was going to let me keep him.”
The actor got candid about the 2008 birth of his first child, Levi, now 9. “Contractions started kicking in. We had a 14-hour session, [wife Camila Alves] and I did. I sat there with her, right between her legs. We got tribal on it, we danced to it! I was DJ-ing this Brazilian music. We were jamming!” he said in an interview. “[Camila] was sweating. No painkiller, let’s go. She just clicked into that gear that only a woman has at a time like this …This is where I learned — and no one tells you this — but having a baby is a bloody, pukey, sweaty, primeval thing! And I mean that as a beautiful thing. It is wild. But the vacuum didn’t work, and the doctor said, ‘C-section.’ “
Shepard told Ellen DeGeneres about the last-minute C-section wife Kristen Bell had with their second daughter, Delta, 3. “Kristen, God bless her, was in labor for 33 hours,” he shared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “[Her labor with first daughter Lincoln was] 15 [hours]. That’s child’s play… She got an epidural hour 14 — as you should — and I think dads need something. I deserve something because I was along for the ride. It’s still a car crash and I’m in the passenger seat. I’m playing Katy Perry and I’m breathing and I’m rubbing her back and I have fatigue and I think, ‘I need something for this, help me.’”
Things got even more intense when it came time for the C-section. “So there’s a sheet and then they go, ‘The baby’s here!’ Then you peek around the sheet and they’re lifting out the baby, but then you notice your wife is completely disassembled,” Shepard said. “I can see inside of her … I was like, ‘It’s a girl! Your liver’s out, I think. And those are definitely your intestines. And she has your eyes! Oh my God, put her back together correctly.’”
Sudeikis told David Letterman all about the crazy circumstances leading up to the birth of his and Olivia Wilde‘s son, Otis, 3. “Around 9 p.m. nothing is moving. … She’s like, ‘Okay, it’s going to be a couple hours, the doctor says. Honey, I’m not allowed to have any food in case something were to go haywire, go ahead and go get some food.’ … I’m like, ‘Well I’m going to Taco Bell’ ’cause I’m about to be a dad,” he recounted on The Late Show.
“I then leave Taco Bell and I think, ‘Well what would a dad from the ’50s do? He’d go to a bar.’ I’m going to go to a bar,” he continued. “I’m thinking, well, I got to take a picture of this, so I lift up my phone, I see ‘Missed call: Olivia.’ It started to ring again … so I answer the phone and I’m like, ‘Hon, what’s going on?’ And she goes, ‘It’s happening, get back here, it’s happening.’ … Then I’m out the door and I’m running like the scene in a Tom Cruise movie, just hauling butt … Within 20 minutes, three pushes, there’s little Otis. We pop on the Pandora as the family, the three of us, are sitting there. The first song that comes on: Cat Stevens, ‘Father and Son.’ Like right out of a movie. It was incredible.”
“I was holding her hands and cheering her on,” Diggs said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show of supporting then-wife Idina Menzel while she was in labor in 2009. “I said I would look two times. I would look when the baby was crowning, and I wanted to look right when [son] Walker came out.” He continued: “And then when he came out, all the sudden it was like my inner gangster came out. I was like, ‘Yeah baby, that’s what I’m talkin’ about, that’s my boy. It was crazy. I couldn’t control myself. It was like the Super Bowl, World Series, World Cup, everything wrapped up into one.”
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