Heavy/NBCUniversal Lala Kent.
Lala Kent shared new details about her pregnancy with baby No. 2. In a March 3, 2024 Instagram post, the “Vanderpump Rules” star shared a photo of her baby bump with the caption, “I’m expanding my pod.” Her 2-year-old daughter, Ocean, beamed as she posed next to her mama’s belly.
Kent welcomed Ocean in March 2021 with her former fiance, Randall Emmett. But for her second child, the single bar star opted to conceive via intrauterine insemination (IUI) using a sperm donor.
Hours after announcing her pregnancy, Kent dropped a bonus episode of her “Give Them Lala” podcast to share details about how it all came about.
Lala Kent Had a Defining Moment When ‘Shopping’ For a Sperm Donor
Kent started the process for Baby No. 2 nearly a year ago when she was filming the 11th season of “Vanderpump Rules.” In the season 11 trailer she even told Lisa Vanderpump she was looking for a sperm donor.
Speaking on the “And Soon There Will be Two!” episode of her podcast, Kent revealed she’d been holding her secret since December 22, when she took a positive pregnancy test. “I’m so happy that the picture finally came out because I’ve been rocking a beer belly for a few weeks now,” she joked, adding that the experience has been the “craziest 14 weeks” ever.
Kent shared that she found her sperm donor at California Cryobank and worked with her fertility specialist. “You’re going in, you look at all this stuff with your donor,” she said. “People kept asking me, what are you looking for in your donor? And I have to say, looks were probably the lowest on the totem pole for me. And I hate to say it, but I also didn’t need them to be extremely smart because I’m not. I would hope that if I was, like, donating eggs they wouldn’t be like, ‘She didn’t go to college, what an [expletive].’ So I didn’t look at it.”
Kent said the defining moment when choosing her donor came down to some of his favorite things. “Well he mentioned lions, his favorite animal was a lion,” she said. “And then…the song that he chose as his favorite and the poem both had to do with the ocean.”
Kent was adamant about choosing a donor who did not share any pictures of himself as an adult because it made it too “personal.” While her donor did not grant adult photos, California Cryobank could see them, so they helped guide her.
“Because my other thing was I don’t care about looks and you know genetics are fickle… but I did say you know. ‘What does he look like?’ Because I feel like… OK, I’m bringing this baby into this world because I so badly wanted to be here. But I also want to eliminate as many questions as I possibly can,” Kent said. “So I was like, I would prefer that this baby kind of had the same aesthetic look as like me, my mom’s, Ocean, so when they come to this world it’s not only like you don’t have a dad because I got you from a donor and you also look not also look nothing [us].”
“I just want to eliminate any sort of, like, toughness for that. Because the world is already tough when you come from a totally normal family,” she added. “I don’t want to make it any tougher for them. And when the child turns 18, if they do have questions that they want to go and find their dad they can the California Cryobank will give them access to the donor.”
Lala Kent Said Her Donor Changed Her Life
Kent has been vocal about why she decided to have a child on her own rather than wait to meet a partner. In 2021, she had a rocky split from Emmett and continues to fight him over custody issues. “His side is just so chaotic and I don’t see resolution coming anytime soon,” the “Vanderpump Rules” star told Page Six in January 2924.
That same month, Kent told Cosmopolitan she saw no need to “find somebody” to have a child with. “I got to thinking, ‘Why does my wanting more children need to involve another person?’” she said. “I knew a donor was an option, and I knew IUI was an option.”
At the time of that interview, Kent confirmed that her donor had been “secured.” “It took a really long time to find the donor,” she said. “It’s like you’re shopping for your partner but only to have a child, so there’s a lot that goes into it. But the moment I found this donor, it just spoke to me. He felt like my baby daddy.”
Kent was able to hear her donor’s voice when he answered the pivotal questions that would be her deciding factors. “There were questions the donors would answer and you would actually hear their voice. Like, even the most simple questions. Like ‘What’s your favorite animal?’ Or ‘What would you want to tell your future children?’ Things like ‘What’s your favorite poem?’ and ‘What’s your favorite song?’”
Kent noted she was given a lot of information about the donors’ personal views, education level, and heritage. But she reiterated she wasn’t looking for anything in particular and just knew the donor she picked felt “right.”
Kent also noted that the donor she used gave her the greatest gift of all. “I get emotional talking about it because this donor has changed my life,” the “Vanderpump Rules” star added.
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