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Former The Ellen DeGeneres Show child star Sophia Grace Brownlee is pregnant with her third baby.
“We are so excited to meet you 🤍,” Brownlee, 23, wrote via Instagram on Sunday, June 14, alongside footage of herself showing her son River, 3, and daughter Athena, 18 months, holding ultrasound photos.
Brownlee also added “Pregnant,” “Pregnancy,” “Mom of 3” and “3 Family Siblings” hashtag to her announcement.
Brownlee, who rose to fame as a child dancing to Nicki Minaj’s “Superbass” on DeGeneres’ now-defunct talk show, welcomed River in March 2023. Athena followed in December 2024. (Brownlee has never publicly identified the father of her children.)
“I was quite young when I had River. I was 19, which I do feel like is quite young,” the social media star recalled on the “Private Story” podcast in February, recalling her experience as a young mother. “I don’t regret, like, doing anything because I’m quite happy with where I am now. When I had Athena, I was 21, which is a bit more older.”
She continued at the time, “It’s obviously young to have kids, but I don’t really think there’s a right age to have kids as long as you’re ready and you’re mature enough, that’s all that matters.”
For Brownlee, she stated that she felt “financially stable” enough to have a family because of her childhood fame and salary.
“If I wasn’t, like, I would have been struggling a lot,” she acknowledged. “So, yeah, I’m blessed to have been in that situation.”
While Brownlee has enjoyed motherhood, it has taken her awhile to feel comfortable after an admittedly scary childbirth experience.
“It actually went quite bad with River. It wasn’t a nice experience,” she recalled on the podcast. “I went into labor naturally, and I was just a week early, which is common. That’s not a problem, and everything was fine. It just, kind of, got bad when you’re actually trying to push the baby out. He was getting really stressed out, and he just wouldn’t come down properly like how [babies] are supposed to.”
Brownlee added, “Loads of different doctors and surgeons [came into my room], which is so scary. I was, like, ‘What’s happening?’ They were, like, ‘We think we’re going to have to do a C-section because the baby’s getting distressed.’ I was just so scared that they were going to put me to sleep ‘cause that is one of my biggest fears because I think I’m not going to wake up.”
Brownlee, who found her emergency C-section to be “one of the scariest times” in her life, later had a vaginal delivery — also known as a VBAC, or vaginal birth after C-section — with baby No. 2.
“Because I had a C-section, they were like, ‘We’re going to book you in for another one,’” she said in February of welcoming Athena. “That’s what they like to do, but the midwives were, like, ‘No, we think you can have her naturally, so at least try.’ I did, and it went so quickly. … I was so proud of myself, and I was glad I got to experience a natural birth, which I would choose every time over a C-section.”
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