KJ Smith and Skyh Black Welcome Their First Baby Together and Reveal the Unexpected Way Tyler Perry Was Involved (Exclusive)

KJ Smith Black and Skyh Black with their baby girl.Credit : 

Stanley Babb/Stanlo Photography

KJ Smith Black and Skyh Black are parents!

The Sisters actress, 40, and the All the Queen’s Men star, 37, welcomed their first baby together, daughter Pryde JaNea Black, on Saturday, Oct. 4 at 5 p.m., sharing the news exclusively with PEOPLE. The newborn entered the world weighing 5 lbs., 11 oz. and measuring 19.5 inches long.

“I wake up every day and I’m just like, ‘I have a little being that is here,’ ” KJ tells PEOPLE. “She looks like a little angel. She’s so precious.”

Skyh echoed his wife’s sentiments, adding that he’s “definitely wrapped around her finger.”

“I get up. I walk around for three hours if she wants me to,” the new dad shares. “My gym workouts are a little bit longer because [I’m] staring at her videos that her mom sends me. She’s perfect, man. She’s so perfect.”

While the Blacks are overjoyed with their new addition, the experience of welcoming their baby girl did not go as expected. The couple planned a home birth surrounded by all of their close family and friends, but after a grueling 48 hours of labor, they had to quickly shift their plans.

“I don’t think our midwife was equipped with how she handled my wife’s birth,” says Skyh. “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.”

“That was the hardest day of my life,” KJ tells PEOPLE. “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.”

The Fatal Affair actress explains that even though she imagined giving birth in a specific way, she knew exactly when it was time to change course, attributing it to her innate mother’s intuition.

“I just imagined having my baby girl in the pool of water and anyone could ask you, I had it all set up,” she shares. “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.”

The newly minted mom, who was experiencing “the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life” with her contractions that were five minutes apart at the time, quickly dialed the number of her boss-turned-friend Tyler Perry. The filmmaker, who the couple says was filming his next project out of the country in the middle of the ocean, answered on the first ring.

“His first question was, ‘What’s wrong?,’ [and] his next question was, ‘Where is Skyh?’ ” KJ recalls. “I just hand Skyh the phone, and all I know is in the next minute. My whole family … is scrambling.”

KJ says everyone in the room started grabbing things, like her prepared hospital bag, and loading the truck to head to the hospital. With the help of Perry, the couple was able to drive to Northside Hospital Atlanta and be escorted into their own private room.

“[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,” she tells PEOPLE. “And so I had my epidural and I had an emergency C-section.”

Skyh and KJ both express gratitude for all of the assistance from Perry that day. Skyh tells PEOPLE that he feels he’s “forever indebted” to the Straw filmmaker for making sure his wife and newborn daughter came out of the situation alive.

“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 says. “He jumped into action, … and he made it possible.”

Echoing her husband’s sentiments, KJ says that she’s immensely grateful for Perry.

“I’m a type A person, so I plan everything, you know what I mean? But 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 says.

“And I’m really blessed from my husband, my family, and Tyler Perry because my family supported me,” she adds. “My husband was there every stepped away, and 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.”

KJ’s birth experience is eerily similar to the prominent storyline of her costar Ebony Obsidian’s on the hit BET+ series Sistas. The actress tells PEOPLE that going through what she went through made the scenes, where Obsidian’s Karen is going through the motions of losing one of her twins, hit closer to home.

“Afterwards I said, ‘Oh my gosh, that is the feeling,’ and now I have to share because it’s important that people understand the risk. Women are risking their lives every day to create life,” she says. “And I’m going to be honest, … I don’t want to sound entitled, but I never thought of the opposite circumstance.”

“I just knew, I always saw women saying, ‘It’s the best day of my life, and I’d never trade it for the world,’ ” she continues. “And I know women who’ve had circumstances, but to go through it? I texted my castmates, [and] I was like, ‘Isn’t that crazy that this happened to me?'”

With everything that she experienced, KJ tells PEOPLE that she’s choosing to focus on one particular message and life lesson.

“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,” she says. “I look at my baby every day and I’m like, ‘You made it, baby.'”

The proud mom and dad add that they can’t wait to share with their little girl the story of how she entered into the world.

“I can’t wait to tell her birth story,” KJ shares. “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.”

While Skyh wasn’t in the room during KJ’s C-section, the Stranger Next Door actor recalled the first few minutes holding his little girl. The proud dad tells PEOPLE that the moment she laid her head on his chest it felt “surreal.”

“When she finally did just lay on my chest and just touch my beard and look at me, … it was like, ‘Daddy, I know you’re here. It’s okay,’ and that made me feel so good,” says the doting dad. “The first moments holding her is just, it’s surreal. It’s surreal. You look at her and you see her face and you see her mom, [and] you see myself.”

KJ shared similar thoughts, adding that she was in “complete shock” when she saw her little girl after 48 hours of labor.

“It was so surreal and she was so precious,” she shares. “I was just in complete shock, in awe, and I just cried.”

With their little girl safely nestled at home, the new parents, who tied the knot in September 2023, are looking forward to discovering everything about their baby girl.

“I want to know what she gravitates toward. I pay attention to her little -isms,” Skyh says. “You know how most babies have the swaddle, [but] she hates being swaddled. She’s just like her dad. She does not like [it]. She likes to stretch.”

He continues, “I want to know her interests. I just want to foster the best way possible that I could just make her happy. Man. I’m a kid in a candy store.”

Although their newborn seemingly is not a fan of the outdoors, KJ tells PEOPLE that she is excited to ease her baby girl into being a person who loves nature.

“Right now, her and the sun is not happening,” she says. “I’m an outside person. I go outside. We have two dogs, so I walk our dogs two or three times a day, and I’m trying to get her to, [but] she’s like, ‘Ah!'”

While baby Pryde is only a few weeks old, KJ and Skyh can already see parts of her personality peaking out. The Whitney actress tells PEOPLE their little girl is the “perfect mix” of her parents.

“She’s got a super chill personality,” she says. “I think she’s the perfect mix of Skyh, and I think that Skyh’s going to encourage her to be a dancer. She’s already showing signs, [and] she’s just like a movement baby and so I like that.”

KJ and Skyh share that this experience of welcoming their little girl “put a fire” in them to push for better when it comes to their profession and in their philanthropy work.

“I don’t want to say go harder because I think words are powerful, but to just really give 120 percent,” she explains. “It’s a different purpose.”

“You can’t even put it into words. It’s inexplicable,” Skyh adds. “It’s like I have to make sure that greatness — what [KJ] and I define as greatness between us — is personified, so that she can see and [we’re] not just [telling] her.”