Heather Rae Young, Tarek's 1st Photos at Home With Son
Bringing their baby home! Heather Rae El Moussa (née Young) and husband Tarek El Moussa are in newborn bliss after welcoming their first child together.
The Selling Sunset star, 35, gave birth to the pair’s son on January 31. As they settle into life with their little one, the twosome revealed his name exclusively to Us Weekly.
“Tristan Jay El Moussa,” Heather gushed to Us, sharing the sweet inspiration behind the moniker. “Tarek was supposed to be named Tristan, and his parents ended up naming him Tarek. And then my dad’s middle name is Jay. So it’s four generations of the middle name Jay.”
The Flipping 101 host, 41, is also the father of daughter Taylor, 12, and son Brayden, 7, whom he shares with ex-wife Christina Hall (née Haack). Tarek and Heather, who tied the knot in October 2021, announced their pregnancy news in July 2022. According to the Netflix personality, Tristan arrived a few days late.
“He was supposed to be born on the 27th of January, and he was born on the 31st of January. And so Tarek and I went in for kind of, like, my final doctor appointment [on the 30th],” Heather told Us. “That was just an appointment. And we did a stress test. I’m 35 years old, so we had done a stress test on him almost every time I went for the last few weeks. And at that point, he wasn’t moving as much as he usually did.”
When the reality star told her doctor that the baby’s movement had “decreased a little bit in the last few days,” she was rushed to the hospital.
“Tarek and I were like, ‘Wait, what do you mean right now?’ And I said, ‘Can I go home and grab my hospital bag that I’ve been prepping for months now and can I go home and wash my hair?’ Like, I hadn’t washed my hair in four days ’cause I didn’t think I was gonna be going to the hospital after this appointment. And she said, ‘No, you can’t. You need to get monitored,'” the new mom recalled, noting that Tarek went to retrieve her hospital bag after getting her “settled” before the delivery.
The former model “had scar tissue built up” from a past biopsy, which made it difficult for her water to break. “There was no way it was going to happen on its own,” she told Us. “They gave me half a pill called Cytotec … that just helped soften [my cervix] to get the process started.”
Heather and her husband were told by a nurse to expect “about two to three hours of pushing” before they met their newborn — but things moved a little more quickly than they’d thought.
“[She] started pushing with a nurse before the doctor was there, you know, thinking it was gonna take a long time. And then the nurse is like, ‘OK, stop pushing,'” the Flip or Flop alum told Us. “I thought we were gonna end up going [an] emergency C-section because his heart rate was dropping. And … the doctor told Heather, ‘Give one last big push, give everything you have, let’s see if we can make it happen.’ And she did.”
Tarek added: “All the blood vessels in her face broke and her chest broke. And our son came out.”
The HGTV personality watched Tristan being delivered, which he called a “surreal moment” despite already having two children. “I knew it was happening, but … it was like a feeling that I didn’t even know [could happen]. And it was just such a beautiful thing.”
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Heather, meanwhile, has bonded with her stepkids since her romance with Tarek began, but welcoming a baby of her own was an experience like no other. “Having my own and carrying him and then going through the labor … it’s just such a beautiful thing that the female body can do,” she explained.
Scroll down for an exclusive first look of Heather and Tarek’s son, Tristan:
With reporting by Leanne Aciz Stanton
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