Mom-to-beGretchen Rossihas decided on a name for her first child.
“I’ve just loved the name Skylar ever since I was a little girl,” Rossi shared. “And it was so interesting because when I told Slade, it was so cute to see his reaction to it. He was just like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love the name Skylar!’ He immediately took to the name.”
“It is so perfect in so many ways and for so many reasons,” Smiley toldAccess. “We’ve spent so much time praying and looking to the sky for guidance and looking for help and supportin this IVF journey.”
“So praying to God and looking to the sky seemed such a perfect correlation between this journey we’ve been on and the name,” he added.
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The couple also revealed that Skylar Gray’s middle name carries a very special connection to Smiley’s18-year-old son, who has brain cancer.
“When it came to the middle name,” Rossi said, “we really wanted it to have a family tie-in … all of a sudden one day, we both looked at each other and we started thinking about his son Grayson, who is sick. He has been this angel on Earth, and he is this unbreakable, amazing little man.”
“What a lot of people don’t know about our embryo, and now our Skylar Gray, is that she actuallyself-corrected herself in the embryonic state,” Rossi continued. “She went from two cells to five cells, and normally when it goes from two to five cells it’s not a genetically sound embryo. She literally pushed that cell aside and went back to four and self-corrected herself.”
The former reality star added, “When we thought about that, we thought, Grayson has been so unbreakable and it seems like little Skylar Gray is so unbreakable, so we decided to name her Skylar Gray after Grayson.”
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Earlier this month, Rossi teased to PEOPLE that she and her longtime partnerhad chosen a name but were“not telling anybody yet.”
“We totally agreed [on it],” she shared. “I’ve had a name that I’ve wanted since I was a little girl and then the only part that we had a hard time with was the middle name. But the middle name, we just picked last week, and we’re very excited about it.”
“We wanted a little girl so much! We couldn’t be happier! Best day of my life!” Rossi wrote on top of an Instagram Story video from the special day.
Slade Smiley and Gretchen Rossi.REAL Footage/Instagram
Gretchen Rossi and Slade Smiley’s sex reveal.Gretchen Rossi/Instagram
In mid-December, the former reality star told PEOPLE that she waspregnant and expecting her first childwith Smiley. The father-to-be has two children from a previous relationship: sons Grayson and Gavin.
“It’s pretty exciting that we have our little Christmas miracle,” Rossi raved at the time.
RELATED VIDEO:RHOCAlum Gretchen Rossi Details “Struggles” with IVF: We’re Currently “Awaiting the Outcome”
The pair first decided to pursue in vitro fertilization (IVF) about four years ago, years after Smiley’s vasectomy.
“We knew that we had togo through IVF in order to get pregnant,” Rossi told PEOPLE. “We went through a round of IVF and in that round we had 14 embryos that came out of that. We were so excited and just beyond ecstatic about the results.”
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.
Around the time of Smiley’s 50th birthday, Rossi underwent an embryo transfer, and in November, the two learned the happy news that they were expecting.
Rossi spoke on her struggle to get pregnanton Instagram in March, saying, “All these amazing emotions I get to feel every day, I realize so many women and couples might never feel because of not having the financial means to fight infertility and do things like IVF. This breaks my heart and is not ok.”
“This little girl growing inside me has given me the passion, & motivation to stand up, use my platform and my voice to make some noise and try to change this!” she wrote.
source: people.com
