JACKSON (AP) — A 25-year-old soldier delayed while trying to fly home to Mississippi from a Texas base still managed to see his wife give birth — via Facetime while stranded at an airport hundreds of miles away.

Never mind the flight delay. He still got to see his baby girl’s arrival via the video connection over cellphone.

Spec. Brooks Lindsey encountered the flight delay earlier this month while making a flight connection in Dallas en route home to Brandon, Mississippi, for the birth of his first child, The Washington Post reported .

Lindsey said he had been training at Fort Bliss with the Mississippi National Guard, preparing for an upcoming deployment to Kuwait. It was then he said that he had to rush home after doctors recommended his wife Haley, 22, undergo an immediate induction because of some medical conditions affecting the mom-to-be.

After Lindsey’s flight was delayed by maintenance issues at the Dallas-Fort Worth international airport, according to the newspaper report, the camouflage-wearing soldier hunkered down in the terminal and watched via video as wife gave birth.

Gripping the cellphone and staring intently, Lindsey took in every moment as his 7-pound, 6-ounce daughter Millie came into the world May 4. The newspaper reports others passing through the airport crowded around him as his emotional reactions were captured on video, clapping and cheering the infant’s safe arrival into the world.

Lindsey told the newspaper his delayed flight was a blessing in disguise because he would never have been able to see the birth if he had been in the air at the time. The paper said an airline employee made the announcement at the gate of the new child’s birth, congratulating the soldier before he boarded the flight home to be with his wife and their new addition to the family.

A few hours later, Lindsey reached the hospital and held his daughter for the first time and hugged and kissed his wife.

As for watching the birth from a distance, he said it was all a blur of emotions.

“It was a pretty exciting — and scary — moment,” Lindsey told the paper by phone Wednesday after his return to Fort Bliss, Texas, after time with the family.