Former Real Housewives of Orange County stars Gretchen Rossi and Slade Smiley shared some HUGE news today as the couple revealed that Gretchen is FINALLY pregnant after a long, hard journey that included multiple IVF treatments as well as a reverse vasectomy.
41-year-old Gretchen and 50-year-old Slade have been very open about their journey attempting to have a child, includin multiple appearances on The Doctors. They returned to the show to make the big announcement on Monday’s episode. “Finally, we have news that we are pregnant!” Gretchen exclaimed though laughter and a smile. “And we’re FREAKED OUT!” Slade chimed in, adding: “but in a good way!”
The episode includes video (embedded at the bottom of this post) of the emotional moment that Gretchen and Slade found out she was pregnant via a phone call, as well as a look back at their journey via highlights from their multiple appearances on the show. “We appreciate you guys,” Gretchen tells producers and the audience. “Thank you for sticking by us through this whole process. And we’re so excited to share with you guys and all the viewers that we actually, finally have some good news!”
Gretchen also spoke with People about the baby news. “It’s pretty exciting that we have our little Christmas miracle,” she says.
She reveals that she had the embryo implanted around Slade’s 50th birthday, which was at the end of October, and the two got the news that she was pregnant in November. Fans can expect to see lots of maternity updates from the social media maven before her due date in July of 2019.
UPDATE – Speaking of social media updates from Gretchen, she just posted this festive gallery of photos showing off her sonogram and her and Slade’s pajamas!
As mentioned above, the pregnancy comes after a very long and difficult road for the couple — a road that they have been very open about as they welcomed their fans along for the very bumpy ride.
The first major bump came at the very beginning. Roughly four years ago, the couple decided to go ahead with in vitro fertilization, and they were able to produce 14 viable embryos. Less than seven hours prior to implantation, the doctor called “saying that all of the embryos had arrested and basically died.”
From People:
“We were just beyond devastated. I couldn’t even get out of bed because you just go from such a high thinking within the next 24 hours you were going to be pregnant to losing everything and losing 14 embryos. That was really, really hard for me and Slade to come out of that,” Rossi says.
“I was in a deep depression after that. I’ve never really suffered through that or been in that circumstance before. We all get sad at times, but I really went into a depression and I couldn’t even think about or talk about IVF or trying to get pregnant again because physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, spiritually, it just breaks you.”
Slade would then undergo a vasectomy reversal, but after 18 months of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant, the two decided to once again give IVF a go.
“I was scared,” Gretchen admits. “I was a 40-year-old woman going back in to try IVF. We went through two more rounds of IVF and we did not have the same amount of eggs and the same amount of embryos as we did the first round four years earlier. It was scary to sit there and think, ‘Oh my gosh, I retrieved 10 eggs.’ But out of 10 eggs, you only got one good embryo — one genetically sound embryo. And then the second round, the same thing happened. We only got two genetically sound embryos out of all of our rounds, so it was very nerve-racking going into this implantation because it was like, you only get two shots at this.”
Those two shots were enough as they received the good news the following month.
Congratulations to Gretchen and Slade! And kudos to them for sharing their fertility journey and bringing more awareness to an issue that millions of men and women are currently struggling with.
Here is a look back at their multiple appearances on The Doctors over the years, followed by their joyful announcement:
Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com
