Heavy/Getty Actress Alexa PenaVega
Longtime Hallmark star Alexa PenaVega has been hospitalized for nearly a week due to a serious pregnancy complication, she revealed in an Instagram video posted from her hospital room on March 18, 2024.
The mom of three, who’s been married to fellow Hallmark star and Big Time Rush member Carlos PenaVega since January 2014, is in her third trimester of a pregnancy that’s been fraught with complications including terrible morning sickness, painful varicose veins, and a “four-centimeter tear” that caused bleeding in her first trimester. Since those early complications, the family moved on a whim from their houseboat off the coast of Florida to a house in Tennessee, they revealed on March 15.
In her latest post, Alexa expressed how grateful she is that they trusted the inexplicable pull they felt to move there because she’s now under the care of “amazing nurses and doctors.” After many tests, she said, her medical team has determined she’s suffered a partial separation of the placenta from the uterus.
“Every single day that I’m still pregnant here in the hospital is literally a miracle,” she said, adding that “it’s a waiting game for all of us.”
Here’s what you need to know:
Alexa PenaVega Was Hospitalized After Intense Bleeding
Alexa began her video on March 18 by sharing that she’d been in the hospital for five days and had debated whether to publicly share her latest trial. Two days prior, the “Never Too Late to Celebrate” alluded to a recent hospitalization in her Instagram Stories, but didn’t indicate at the time that she was still in the hospital.
“Remember when I said this pregnancy has been eventful,” she wrote, and then posted a photo of herself in a hospital bed, surrounded by Carlos and their kids — sons Ocean, 7, and Kingston, 4, and daughter Rio, almost 3.
Over that photo, she wrote, “Last week this happened…But gotta give a shout out to some amazing nurses between two hospitals in Tennessee. Emily. Mikaela. Halle. And Sarah. Dream team❤️”
“It’s been a wild ride,” Alexa wrote on a third slide. “As of now baby is still cooking. Praise the Lord! The amazing prayer warrior friends have been hard at work and it has shown through and through!”
In her March 18 video, Alexa shared further details of why she’d been hospitalized.
“I started bleeding a little bit like a week and a half ago,” she said, adding that although she’d experienced temporary bleeding with the tear she had early in her pregnancy, she thought it was odd to have bleeding begin again in her third trimester, so she went in to get checked.
“Bleeding ended up stopping and I was released and all was good,” she recalled, but then added that things took a turn one morning when she woke up at 5 a.m. to use the bathroom.
“I made it to the bathroom without any issues, but it was the second that I sat down to use the restroom that blood just kind of went everywhere,” Alexa explained. “There was definitely this moment of, like, ‘This is bad. This is not good.’ There was a lot of blood everywhere, and I was pretty sure there was other liquids as well.”
Alexa said she “screamed for Los” and that when he rushed into the bathroom, the scene “obviously probably freaked him out a whole lot.” They piled their kids into the car, she said, and they “raced to the hospital.”
Alexa PenaVega Says She ‘Can’t Imagine’ What Would Have Happened If Her Family Hadn’t Moved to Tennessee Weeks Ago
In her video, Alexa shared that the hardest part of the ordeal is that she couldn’t feel her baby kicking.
“I was just praying over my stomach and still, like, doing everything I could to just push baby, to get, like, a little bit of movement,” she recalled. “And by the grace of God, on the drive over, baby finally started kicking and moving and squirming around, so I think it was just asleep…but that was definitely very scary.”
Alexa said her condition, a partial separation of the placenta from the uterus, has stabilized to a place that “can be maintained” and monitored, but no one is sure for how long.
She said, “Now it’s just a matter of, like, ‘How long can we keep it like this? How long can I keep baby in my tummy? How long do I have to be in the hospital for?'”
According to the Mayo Clinic, the condition Alexa described — formally called placental abruption — is an “an uncommon yet serious complication” that happens when “the placenta partly or completely separates from the inner wall of the uterus,” which can cause heavy bleeding for the mother and decrease or block the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the baby.
Alexa said that she had already been “taking it very, very easy” at home, so it’s unknown why she developed the complication. She hopes to be released from the hospital so she can finish out her pregnancy at home, she said.
The serendipity of this crisis happening weeks after the PenaVegas decided to sell their houseboat and move their family to Tennessee is not lost on the actress.
“I just laugh at like, even God’s timing with us,” she said in her video. “Deciding to leave the boat — which was a really, really hard choice because we were so dedicated to that journey — but then arriving here and like, literally within two weeks experiencing this. I can’t imagine what would have happened had we been on the boat or in, like, the middle of the Bahamas or on some island. Like, thank God we were here and that I’m getting the care I’m getting. I’m just so thankful.”
Alexa finished her video by sharing how grateful she is for people’s prayers and added, “I’m just gonna cherish every extra day that I get with little baby. Thank you for your prayers and just keep on praying because we still have a little ways to go and this baby needs to cook!”