Adrienne Bailon-Houghton held onto hope during her “really hard” fertility journey before son Ever’s birth.
The “I Can See Your Voice” judge called herself “the most delusional person” while speaking exclusively to Page Six about her road to motherhood, which included IVF and surrogacy.
The actress, 40, “let go” of how she thought her baby boy’s arrival would go, from “beautiful maternity shoot photos” to a changing body, and accepted her reality.
The “shift in perspective” was “huge” for Bailon-Houghton, who instead focused on reaching the “ultimate goal” of welcoming her little one in August 2022 with the help of a gestational carrier.
“I just wanted to be a mom,” the “Cheetah Girls” star said. “I get to love up on this little boy, and I get the honor and privilege of raising him.”
The former “Real” co-host did, however, have to work to “compartmentalize” her emotions while filming the talk show and undergoing eight IVF cycles.
“It was actually really hard,” she recalled. “I would go home and deal with what I was dealing with and then come to the show and focus on … doing my job.”
The former Disney Channel star also admitted to being “completely clueless” about the financial burden of fertility treatment, saying she had “no idea” what a follicle count was or that her eggs had been in a “wild decline” since age 24.
Bailon-Houghton said the same to People last month while revealing she and husband Israel Houghton dropped “easily over a million” dollars on growing their family.
Since Ever’s arrival, her ambitions have “changed.”
She told us, “I always will choose to be with my son over anything. … Like, I’d rather hang out with my kid.”
Notably, Bailon-Houghton has been a judge on “I Can See Your Voice” since 2020 and gushed to Page Six about the third season.
Bailon-Houghton loves the “guessing game” of figuring out “which [contestants] are good singers and bad singers without actually hearing them sing” — and then pairing them up with iconic musical guests.
“It will either be a trainwreck on live TV, which is very entertaining, or it will be an incredible musical moment that we won’t forget,” she explained.
New episodes of “I Can See Your Voice” premiere on Fox Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET.
