Real Housewives of Atlanta star Sanya Richards-Ross, 38, is over the moon after revealing she is expecting her second child, although she faced an uphill battle to get to this point.
In season 15 of the hit Bravo reality show, cameras capture the Olympian as she struggled to conceive and includes the joy she felt when she finally found out she was pregnant. In a recent interview with People, the Jamaican beauty shared that she suffered a miscarriage before she conceived her second child.
“It was very traumatic,” said Richards-Ross, who shares a 5-year-old son, Aaron Jermaine, with her husband, former NFL star Aaron Ross. “I was in New York and had a really bad miscarriage. I had to go to the hospital. I had to have a blood transfusion. It was very, very, very scary.”
She added: “You already opened your heart to becoming a mom, so it was awful. Even just talking about it… it really was a difficult time.”
Her loss was painful, she said and added she was hesitant to have another child, but the past few years of her life were a turning point.
“I think a lot of women can relate to this too, but when you become a mom, you can sometimes question, ‘What’s my identity now going to be outside of the home?'” Richards-Ross questioned. “I had been an athlete, competing across the world while representing Team USA. Then, after retiring from sports and having a son, all these life changes hit Ross and I simultaneously. It was like a tornado hit our relationship for that 14 years prior to having our son was like a honeymoon at the time. And It was really overwhelming.”
She continued: “Don’t get me wrong, Aaron and I, we loved being parents,” Richards-Ross adds. “But all these years in, we had just gotten into a good rhythm where we finally figured out how we wanted to parent. We had that balance where we were communicating well again, I was finally working again… And so I was skeptical about having another child.”
Thankfully, she conceived months later. “At my age, it’s considered a geriatric pregnancy, so I was nervous that the window has started to close. And after the miscarriage, I wasn’t ready to go through something like that again — that physical, mental, and emotional pain. But my doctor assured me that everything looks good, and sure enough, it worked. I didn’t think it’d happen so quick again. But my husband, he prides himself. He’s like, ‘I never miss. Whenever you’re ready, I’m ready.”
Richards-Ross is currently four months pregnant with an expected delivery date on December 25.
“It’s going to be the best Christmas gift ever,” she said. “But I just couldn’t be happier and more clear about. I know I can do this. I’ve done it before. I have the support. I know what to expect. I’m so ready to meet this little one.”
“I told my husband, ‘I don’t know at what point in life you understand you will have disappointments along the way, but I hate that this had to be an example for him’ But when I got pregnant again, his reaction was so special. He said, ‘God does answer prayers!’ And I could just see that joy and renewed faith in him, which made this all that much more powerful for me, in a way.”
Congratulations, Sanya and Aaron!
