Proud mom Adrienne Bailon-Houghton is opening up about her journey to motherhood which took six years and “easily over” $1 million in IVF treatments.
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As previously reported the former The Real co-host and husband Israel Houghton welcomed son Ever James, via surrogate, after keeping his impending birth a secret.
Now 20 months later, the actress is opening up to PEOPLE about the array of treatments she underwent to have her baby boy.
“I only did eight cycles of IVF, but that doesn’t include the amount of IUIs I did and every other kind of imaginable treatments that you could imagine for fertility,” Bailon-Houghton told PEOPLE. “So it was a pretty tough six years of trying to have my son.”
She’s also being completely candid about how much she spent to become a mother and said she thinks it’s “easily over a million.”
“And that is not realistic for the average person. And I recognize that,” Bailon-Houghton added.
Despite the pricey cost of motherhood and multiple miscarriages, it was well worth it for the mom to not just Ever James, but her husband’s four children from a previous relationship.
“Realized I was replaceable in every other role in life… Except for mother. So I invested my time & energy wisely… @everjames,” she captioned a recent photo of her baby boy.
She also echoed that statement in a 2022 message about welcoming her son into the world.
“He is worth every tear, every disappointment, every delayed prayer, every IVF cycle, every miscarriage. Everything. All we feel is joy and overwhelming love & gratitude,” wrote the mom on Instagram.
This isn’t the first time Bailon-Houghton has been open about her struggle to conceive.
Source: Michael Kovac / Getty
During a 2108 episode of The Real, she told watchers;
“I think that as an audience we should be sensitive to the fact that everybody doesn’t get pregnant right away. I think for myself I thought it would happen so easily for me and it just hasn’t happened that way.”
She added that she was trusting God’s timing and said that she thought because she was Latina that if her husband “looked at her” she’d be pregnant.
“I really believed that and it just happened been that way. […] I’ve had to come to peace with that it’ll happen when it’s God’s timing and I believe in that and I have faith in all of that,” she added. But it can be really discouraging and it can be really frustrating.”
Luckily she got her wish!
Congrats to Adrienne Bailon and Israel Houghton!