TELLS OF 'JOY' WITH ANNA'S DANNIELYNN
April 18, 2007 -- If DNA testing didn't do it, these adorable pics should prove once and for all that Larry Birkhead is the father of lookalike daughter Dannielynn.
A beaming Birkhead looks every inch the proud papa in these Bahamas shots published by OK! magazine.
"All the joy that parents experience when they go to the delivery room and they see the baby for the first time, I felt that," Birkhead told the mag of his first meeting with Dannielynn.
The photographer and ex-beau of late model Anna Nicole Smith learned that he was definitely the dad on April 10, after a bitter paternity fight.
Smith and Birkhead became estranged, he said, because she thought he wanted sole custody of the baby on account of her drug problem.
"Don't fall in love again, I'd be a bit jealous," she wrote him three days before she died on Feb. 8, according to the article, which hits newsstands today.
While dating, the two tried to have a baby and planned to name her either Annabella or Marilyn Nicole - after Smith's idol, Marilyn Monroe. If it was a boy, they'd call him Niko.
Birkhead also said in the OK! interview that his past nemesis Howard K. Stern, who previously claimed to be the baby's father, has been teaching him the ropes of parenting.
"He knows her likes and dislikes, and he's kind enough to help me out, he said."
He added of his old foe, "People blame a lot on him, but Anna had her own mind, too."
Now his biggest barrier to domestic bliss is Virgie Arthur, Smith's mother.
The Texas grandmother wants Birkhead to assure she gets custody of the 7-month-old if anything happens to him, but he wants his family to raise her in the event of his death.
Arthur's lawyer, Debra Rose, says she's been trying to hammer out a custody deal with Birkhead, but there's no agreement yet.
"We're still in negotiations," Rose said. "We're still talking."
jennifer.fermino@nypost.com