Adrienne Bailon-Houghton Says She 'Easily' Spent $1 Million On Fertility Treatments
Adrienne Bailon-Houghton understands that she had resources on her side during her journey to become a mom.
In a Saturday interview with People, the former co-host of “The Real” revealed that she and husband Israel Houghton spent “easily over a million” dollars on fertility treatments across the years.
“That is not realistic for the average person,” she told the magazine. “And I recognize that.”
Bailon-Houghton, who welcomed son Ever James via surrogate in August 2022, said that she’d experienced “a pretty tough six years of trying to have my son.”
“I only did eight cycles of IVF, but that doesn’t include the amount of IUIs I did and every other kind of imaginable treatments that you could imagine for fertility,” she explained, referring to in vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemination.
Bailon-Houghton has been frank about her feelings around surrogacy, previously saying that she felt “robbed” of the experience of carrying a child herself.
“It sounds so stupid — so superficial,” she told “Today” last year. “But I felt robbed of maternity photos. I wanted to feel the movement of a baby inside me. I wanted my husband to experience my pregnant body. I imagined my son being born, and now had other people in this room that were not a part of what I imagined.”
Ever’s birth was a turning point for Bailon-Houghton, however.
“When I pulled my son out of someone else’s vagina and I put that baby on me, I ugly cried,” the TV personality told “Today.”
“So yes, while I do feel like I was robbed of some things, when I came full circle and that baby was in my my arms I felt like: Who cares?” she said. “I do not care about how I thought it was supposed to be. This is my perfect moment.”