“Thank you for showing me a level of happiness I have never known.”
A new dad is taking the meaning of “surprise proposal” to a whole new level.
On Oct. 10, Denzel Kimbrough was with his then-girlfriend Challis Bell in a delivery room at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois when the couple welcomed their first child — baby boy Ace.
Moments later, Kimbrough got down on one knee and proposed — much to Bell’s surprise.
While the new mom was getting her vitals checked, the nurses were hard at work fitting Ace into his first outfit: a onesie that read, “Mommy, will you marry Daddy?”
Bell was initially confused as she looked at her baby’s outfit, but it started to click when she saw her now-fiancé kneeling next to her hospital bed with a ring in his hand.
“Oh my god, yes,” she said in a clip of the moment shared by Advocate Health.
In an interview with Today.com, Kimbrough said he and his now-fiancée had talked about getting married leading up to the baby’s birth, which got him thinking of marriage proposal ideas.
He described the delivery room proposal as a “random idea” he thought of one day.
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“We had talked about getting engaged before our son was born, and one day I thought, ‘What better place than the delivery room?’” he told the outlet.
“I was completely shocked. We knew we were going to get engaged, but that was a big surprise!” Bell added.
In the caption of their post, Advocate Health explained that Kimbrough and Bell first met in high school but lost touch after he moved away. They reconnected several years later and started dating shortly after.
Now three years after they reconnected, the couple are parents — and will soon be newlyweds.
"Since she came back into my life, I knew I wanted to marry her," Kimbrough said, per ABC News.
Kimbrough’s surprise proposal met with mixed reactions online
In a poll conducted by “Today,” readers were asked how they felt about Kimbrough’s surprise proposal.
And the more than 200 respondents shared mixed reactions.
41% of respondents described it as a “sweet idea” but added that it “wasn’t for me,” while 31% labeled it the “ultimate gesture.” The remaining 28% said it was “bad timing” and he should’ve “let her rest.”
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The comments under Advocate Health’s video were equally as mixed.
“This is *really* sweet BUT— DONT PROPOSE TO ME AFTER IVE JUST DONE THE HARDEST PHYSICAL THING EVEEEEERRR,” one user wrote under the video.
“For me, I enjoyed having two separate special moments. These are two very different milestones,” another user wrote.
“I actually don’t like this. I think he should have let her have her first moments with her newborn… but instead he made it about him. Idk, just not sitting well with me,” a third user commented.
Others described it as the “most overwhelming moment of her life,” but some users applauded the husband-to-be.
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“Love this doesn’t matter where he did it made the moment extra beautiful two special gifts on one day! Congratulations,” a fourth user wrote.
