Gretchen Rossiis baring her bump — literally!
TheReal Housewives of Orange Countyalum, who’s four months pregnant, posed in an intimate photo shoot earlier this week wearing nothing but aCalvin Kleinbra and undies.
The first-time mom-to-be, 41, smiled as she looked at the camera with her hands wrapped around her belly. She let her hair flow down her shoulders, finishing the look with a light-pink lip color.
In mid-December, the former reality star told PEOPLE that she waspregnant and expecting her first childwith longtime partnerSlade Smiley. They first announced the news onThe Doctors.
“It’s pretty exciting that we have our littleChristmasmiracle,” Rossi raved at the time.
Gretchen Rossi.BACKGRID
“It’s been a little bit harder than I definitely anticipated,” Rossi said of her pregnancy symptoms. “I think they lie to you when they tell you you’re gonna get morning sickness. They lie to you — it’s all-day sickness! But the good news is that my doctor told me that’s actually a good sign.”
Amanda Edwards/Getty
The pair first decided to purse in vitro fertilization (IVF) about four years ago, years after Smiley’s vasectomy.
“We knew that we had to go through IVF in order to get pregnant,” Rossi said. “We wentthrough a round of IVF and inthat round we had 14 embryos that came out of that. We were so excited and just beyond ecstatic about the results.”
Tiffany Rose/Getty
But about six hours before their embryo transfer, the couple received a phone call from the doctor “saying thatall of the embryos had arrestedand basically died” — news that left them “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 said.
RELATED VIDEO:RHOCAlum Gretchen Rossi Details “Struggles” with IVF: We’re Currently “Awaiting the Outcome”
“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 eventhink about or talk about IVF ortrying to get pregnant again because physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, spiritually, it just breaks you.”
Around the time of Smiley’s 50th birthday, Rossi underwent an embryo transfer, and in November, the two learned the happy news that they’re expecting.
Jerod Harris/Getty
While the road to pregnancy hasn’t been easy for the duo, the journey has strengthened their bond.
“There’s beena roller coaster of emotions through thisand I don’t want to pretend, especially for all the couples out there going through this, [that] it’s [an] easy journey — it really is not. Yes, we have definitely grown through this, thank goodness,” said Rossi. “Now we have realized how much closerwe’ve come through this process.”
She added, “When you’re having your partner having to shoot you in the ass every morning with the needle and when you’re going through as many shots as you’re going through and mood swings and the ups and the downs and just everything, it definitely bonds you together and brings you back together.”
source: people.com
