Kristen Doute and Luke Broderick debuted the first photos of their two-week-old daughter, Kaia Lily, on Tuesday.
As the latest episode of The Valley saw Kristen, 42, and Luke, 33, getting engaged on a boat in Hawaii, the couple was seen on the cover of Us Weekly magazine, where they held their baby girl and Kristen dished on motherhood, parenting, labor, a pregnancy scare, plans for a second child, season three, and more.
“A (Reality) Star is Born!” Us Weekly proclaimed on the cover of its latest issue, which was shared on Instagram on July 1.
“I feel really lucky, really fortunate. Truly, I could not have dreamed this,” Kristen admitted to Us Weekly. “She is the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen in my life … I feel so incredibly connected to her. I don’t even have words.”
Before giving birth on June 11, Kristen suffered a pregnancy scare, during which she was bleeding and had to go to the emergency room.
“They [called] it a possible miscarriage, even though we heard the heartbeat and saw her on the ultrasound. You go home and the baby could still not make it, so that was terrifying,” Kristen recalled.
While Kristen was afraid of giving birth and got induced a week early due to being over 40, she shared that her delivery was surprisingly easy.
“Total labor was maybe 14 hours … I had an epidural, so I felt absolutely nothing,” she revealed. “I pushed for nine minutes … Luke was holding my hand, everyone was saying, ‘Push, push, push.’ … And then she’s lying on my chest. It was just perfect.”
Now that Kaia is here, Kristen said she and Luke were feeling understandably “exhausted.”
“The tired thing is no joke,” she admitted. “Maybe a day and a half ago, Luke and I had this system down: We’re like, OK, she’s napping; when she gets up, the bottle, the diapers are ready, all good to go. We were like, we got this, and we high-fived. Then last night I woke up, my boobs were exploding, I’m covered in milk, she’s screaming and crying, and we’re both like, ‘Oh my God, what do we do? What the hell do we do? Oh my God!’ … [But] we’re all figuring things out together.”
According to Kristen, the best part of motherhood is that each “moment is different.”
“When she opens her eyes for longer than two minutes, it’s so exciting. Those little tiny things are just the biggest deal,” she gushed.
As she looked ahead, Kristen said she hoped she wouldn’t be a helicopter mom.
“She looks exactly like Luke, but if she has my personality, there’s no one better on this earth to raise a little Kristen than me,” she noted. “I know how to get her to listen and what’s going to make her rebel. But I want her to be more adventurous than I am. I want her to be less anxious. I want her to be a lot more like Luke in those ways.”
As for how Luke is as a father, Kristen said that when he holds their daughter, Kaia’s tears disappear.
“She feels his energy. She’s very calm with him,” she described.
Although Kristen is new to parenting, she said she has already learned a valuable lesson in patience.
“I’m an extremely impatient person, but with her, it’s completely different,” she explained.
Also looking to the future, Kristen confirmed Kaia would be seen on The Valley season three.
“It’s going to be the best video yearbook ever for us to film season 3,” she stated. “I’m proud, I want the whole world to know how beautiful she is, and how excited we are, but we’re also very protective and I’m not going to be sharing every waking moment of our lives either. There are some things that are just for us.”
Also during the interview, Kristen shared plans for a second child.
“We’d love to have a second baby, if that’s possible for us,” she confirmed. “Luke’s like, ‘You know you’re the most fertile right after having a baby, so we can go for No. 2!’ Whatever is in the cards for us is what’s going to happen … But I also know if we want a second one, we shouldn’t wait a long time to try.”
The Valley season two airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
