Getting real. Heather Rae El Moussa (née Young) and Tarek El Moussa opened up about the Selling Sunset star’s IVF journey, including how the Flip or Flop alum and his children have helped her through it with a touching gesture.
“I must say, having Tarek and Taylor and Brayden there for moral support was everything,” the reality star, 34, exclusively tells Us Weekly, explaining that she wants to “involve [the kids] throughout the whole process.” She adds: “They’d sing with me and hold my hand and stand in the bathroom with me.”
Tarek, 40, — who shares daughter Taylor, 11, and son Brayden, 6, with ex-wife Christina Hall (née Haack) — “would just hug me and say, ‘It’ll be over soon,’” Heather recalls to Us. She notes that her husband would comfort her on the days she “didn’t even wanna get out of bed” by saying, “It’s not you. It’s just the hormones.”
“If I didn’t have him, I don’t know how I would have gotten through it,” the Netflix star shares.
She elaborates: “Because if I was on my own — there’s a lot of ups and downs and it’s emotional and the hormones and pricking yourself every single day with shots and going in for blood work,” noting she’s “already scared to get my blood taken” to begin with.
Heather calls herself “lucky” to receive the “moral support” from Tarek and Taylor and Brayden, who she lovingly refers to as “my kids.”
The couple have been candid about their back-and-forth decisions on trying for a third child. The realtor, who tells Us she has “low fertility,” opened up about wanting to freeze embryos in November 2021, one month after she and the Tarek’s Flip Side alum tied the knot. She has proceeded to document her IVF journey via Instagram and revealed last month that she was “pausing” the treatments for now.
“We were planning on implanting this summer, and it is already May and the summer is around the corner,” she explains to Us, adding that a series of “health issues” — Heather recently underwent vocal cord surgery and broke her foot — made her take a beat.
“I just didn’t feel like I wanted to put my body through anything else, and so we decided to push it off a few months,” she adds. In an interview with E! News’ Daily Pop in April, she revealed that she intends to get pregnant “sometime this year, maybe in [the] fall.”
The pair currently have four frozen embryos that are awaiting “further testing,” Heather explains to Us, due to Tarek’s Lynch syndrome. The genetic predisposition, which they want to ensure the embryos don’t have, gives one a higher chance of getting various types of cancer. (The HGTV alum has survived both testicular cancer and thyroid cancer.)
Though Heather and Tarek discussed the possibility of having twins “last night,” she reveals, “I think we decided as a couple that we’re gonna do one and be done.”
