This viral video of a soldier surprising his wife after she gave birth is 😭

As a military spouse, Cydney Cooper is used to doing things alone. But when she delivered her twin daughters early after complications due to Influenza A, she was missing her husband Skylar more than ever.

Recovering from the flu and an emergency C-section, and trying to parent the couple’s two older boys and be with her new infant daughters in the NICU, Cydney was exhausted and scared and just wanted her husband who was deployed in Kuwait with the Army and wasn’t expected home for weeks.

Alone in the NICU 12 days after giving birth, Cydney was texting an update on the twins to her husband when he walked through the door to shoulder some of the massive burden this mama was carrying.

“I was typing up their summary as best I could and trying to remember every detail to tell him when I looked up and saw him standing there. Shock, relief, and the feeling that everything was just alright hit me at once. I just finally let go,” she explains in a statement to Motherly.

The moment was captured on video thanks to a family member who was in on Skylar’s surprise and the reunion has now gone viral, having been viewed millions of times. It’s an incredible moment for the couple who hadn’t seen each other since Skylar had a three-day pass in seven months earlier.

Cydney had been caring for the couple’s two boys and progressing in her pregnancy when, just over a week before the viral video was taken, she tested positive for Influenza A and went into preterm labor. “My husband was gone, my babies were early, I had the flu, and I was terrified,” she tells Motherly.

“Over the next 48 hours they were able to stop my labor and I was discharged from the hospital. It only lasted two days and I went right back up and was in full on labor that was too far to stop.”

Cydney needed an emergency C-section due to the babies’ positioning, and her medical team could not allow anyone who had previously been around her into the operating room because anyone close to Cydney had been exposed to the flu.

“So I went in alone. The nurses and doctors were wonderful and held my hand through the entire thing but at the same time, I felt very very alone and scared. [Skylar] had been present for our first two and he was my rock and I didn’t have him when I wanted him the most. But I did it! He was messaging me the second they wheeled me to recovery. Little did I know he was already working on being on his way.”

When he found out his baby girls were coming early Skylar did everything he could to get home, and seeing him walk into the NICU is a moment Cydney will hold in her heart and her memory forever. “I had been having to hop back and forth from our sons to our daughters and felt guilty constantly because I couldn’t be with all of them especially with their dad gone. It was one of the most amazing moments of my life and I won’t be forgetting it.”

It’s so hard for a military spouse to do everything alone after a baby comes, and the military does recognize this. Just last month the Army doubled the amount of leave qualifying secondary caregivers (most often dads) can take after a birth or adoption, from 10 days to 21 so that moms like Cydney don’t have to do it all alone.

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