A dad shot himself in the crotch during a gender reveal party gone awry
- Tom Cressotti and his wife, Kristin, hosted a gender reveal party in August, after struggling to get pregnant.
- But when Cressotti held the cannon cartridge the wrong way, he accidentally shot himself in the crotch.
- The injury happened when there's been an uproar over gender reveal parties, especially after one caused a wildfire in California.
Standing together in their Western Massachusetts yard last month, Tom Cressotti and his pregnant wife, Kristin, dressed in pink and blue, each hoisted canon cartridges and prepared to pull. Their 4-year-old stood in the middle, fingering her pink and blue dress. The color of the cartridge's contents, blue smoke or pink smoke, would reveal the gender of the Cressotti's baby to the parents, and their guests.
But when Cressotti held the cartridge incorrectly, it shot powder (blue, it's a boy) directly into his crotch. A viral video of the event captured him on the ground, writhing in pain.
"Well, this is off to a great start," Cressotti told Insider of how he reacted after the initial jolt hit him.
It wasn't just the positioning of the cartridge that wasn't ideal. The timing wasn't great, either. Just as the family's story was gaining traction — the video got more than 750,000 views — a much more devastating gender reveal party took place.
In early September, in San Bernardino County, California, a device a family used for a gender reveal party sparked a wildfire, which spread to more than 14,000 acres.
At that point, the woman who invented the gender reveal concept quickly came out against the parties, and urged people not to host them. Some commenters confused the two stories and accused Cressotti of causing the wildfires in California.
"That would be very hard from Massachusetts," he said.
Before all of this, Cressotti wasn't preoccupied with the gender of the baby, he said. He was happy to be able to celebrate. The Cressottis had tried for several years to get pregnant."I just want a healthy, happy kid," he said.
His 4-year-old, Ella, has opinions, though.
"My daughter wanted a brother," her dad said, "so he wouldn't play with all her toys."