One special human has actors KJ Smith and Skyh Black starstruck—their babygirl, Pryde JaNea Black. On October 4, the ‘ Sistas’ star gave birth to her first child and has been in awe ever since.
“I wake up every day and I’m just like, ‘I have a little being that is here,’” Smith told People magazine. “She looks like a little angel. She’s so precious.”
Equally enamored is her husband and fellow actor, Black, who admits that at just a few weeks old, their daughter has him “wrapped around her finger.”
Though the couple has been basking in the cuddles and bliss of having a newborn, Smith admits that their birth story was far from easy. With initial plans to give birth in the comfort of their home surrounded by family and friends, the couple was forced to change plans when the soon-to-be mommy’s instincts kicked in.
“That was the hardest day of my life,” KJ explained, recalling the grueling 48 hours of labor. “It was really hard because … I was so dead set on having a natural birth, and I just knew it was going to work for me. It worked for so many people, and I was like painfully optimistic. I just imagined having my baby girl in the pool of water, and anyone could ask you, I had it all set up.”
She continued: “I was in so much pain. I was in so much agony. And like I said, things had not gone [as planned], and it’s just a mother’s intuition. I was like, ‘Something’s not right with my baby,’ and I just knew that. And so I was like, ‘Someone give me my phone!’ And knew who to call”
That call was to none other than Tyler Perry, who was reportedly filming a project out of the country when he answered the call.
“His first question was, ‘What’s wrong?’ [and] his next question was, ‘Where is Skyh?’” she recalled. “I just handed Skyh the phone, and all I know is in the next minute. My whole family…is scrambling.”
Looking back on their home birth experience, Black says, “I don’t think our midwife was equipped with how she handled my wife’s birth. There were certain things that were done that I, personally, as a husband and a father, don’t feel that had my wife’s best interest at heart.”
Moments after getting off the phone with their boss-turned-friend, the couple was able to get into a private room at Northside Hospital Atlanta, where the team confirmed what Smith’s maternal instincts noted: something was, in fact, wrong with the baby.
“Tyler really just called and made sure the staff were aware that we were coming and we needed help urgently. I’m just extremely grateful, and I cry about it every day,” she explained. “[The team was] patient and diligent with me, and per what I already knew, they let me know something was going on with the baby, and her heart rate was dropping to dangerously low levels because of the circumstance that had happened in our home birth. And so I had my epidural and I had an emergency C-section.”
Now able to hold his healthy baby girl, the “All The Queen’s Men” actor says he is “forever indebted” to Perry.
“I feel as a man, I’ll be forever indebted to not just the boss, but the mentor and the close family friend that Tyler has become because I feel he saved my wife and my baby’s life,” he explained. “He jumped into action, … and he made it possible.”
For Smith, who admits to being a “type A” person, she says labor altered her mindset so much so that she says she cries about it daily.
“I was so dead set on a certain outcome, and I just feel so blessed every day because I could have lost my life and I could have lost my baby’s life,” she shared. “It’s important that people understand the risk. Women are risking their lives every day to create life.”
She continued: “Labor was nothing I thought it was going to be, and I’m okay with that because my lesson in that is to relinquish control because God is going to do what God is going to do, and it’s going to be miraculous and beautiful. I look at my baby every day and I’m like, ‘You made it, baby.’ I can’t wait to tell her her birth story. I can’t wait to just reaffirm to her that she is strong and that she’s powerful and that there’s a reason that she came into this world unscathed.”
Now, the couple is excited to embark on the journey of parenthood and learn all of their baby girl’s interests and her “little isms.”
“I want to know her interests. I want to foster the best way possible that I can make her happy,” the new girldad concluded.
