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John Legend and Chrissy Teigen have been incredibly open about their journey with having suffered a heartbreaking miscarriage before they welcomed their third child.
Now the couple revealed they secretly welcomed a fourth child through a more unconventional route. Keep reading to learn more!
On Wednesday, the couple announced that they had welcomed a baby boy. The couple had help from a surrogate named Alexandra, their surrogate, and to honor the woman who helped them bring their bundle of joy into the world, they did something spectacular.
In a post, Chrissy mentioned Alexandra is “the most incredible, loving, compassionate surrogate we could ever imagine.”
“I knew she was a perfect match for us the moment we spoke to her. All our wishes and dreams aligned,” Chrissy wrote. “I wanted to be her friend, I wanted our children to play, I wanted dinner together, I wanted to lay my head on her belly and be able to feel the hiccups and kicks. I wanted them to be in our lives for as long as time would allow.”
She wrote how Alexandra, “fought to get ready for a second transfer,” giving up “her own body” for surgeries and also suffering through “the mental toll” of doing so.
The two women were pregnant at the same time, with Chrissy Teigen carrying the couple’s daughter Esti. When they found out that Alexandra was pregnant with a little boy she wrote they “were overjoyed.”
“We ate hot pot to celebrate, watched Vanderpump Rules with our growing bellies, our families blending into one for the past year,” Chrissy recalled.
On June 19, Chrissy took to Instagram to write “got to witness the most beautiful woman, my friend, our surrogate, give birth amidst a bit of chaos, but with strength and pure joy and love.”
And to honor their surrogate, Chrissy and John decided to do something wonderful. Chrissy wrote, “We want to say thank you for this incredible gift you have given us, Alexandra. And we are so happy to tell the world he is here, with a name forever connected to you, Wren Alexander Stephens.”
The couple has two older children, Luna and Miles. They also welcomed their third daughter Esti six months ago. John Legend also shared a post of him and his family with the newest member. He wrote in the caption, “Wren Alexander Stephens, our new love.”
The family seems to be incredibly happy with their newest addition. We wish them the very best! Share this piece of happy news with your friends and family on Facebook.
In a world where numerous families live in fear due to domestic violence, it is disheartening to witness their struggles.
Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that some are afraid to leave their abusive relationships and start anew. However, amidst these challenges, stories of remarkable strength and determination emerge.
One such story is that of Cara Brookins, a mother of four, who, with limited resources, decided to embark on an extraordinary journey that would change the course of her family’s life forever.
Cara Brookins, a survivor of a long-term destructive relationship marked by control and violence, dreamt for years of providing a safer home for her four children.
However, the Arkansas mother knew she couldn’t afford a house big enough to accommodate them. In 2008, Cara made a life-altering decision that would surpass even her wildest dreams. Filled with both her fear and her resolve, she took her children and relocated to a small cabin near Little Rock, Arkansas.
”While on our way to a rented cabin for Thanksgiving, we passed by a house destroyed by a tornado. It was a dream home that revealed itself,” recalls Cara in an interview with THV11.
Cara envisioned a better life for herself and her children within those walls. Although she couldn’t afford to purchase a house, she believed that with a little help, she could build one. Determined to make a change, Cara decided to construct her 3,500 square foot house from the ground up, ensuring each of her children had their own room.
With no prior construction experience, Cara and her children turned to YouTube tutorials and sought guidance from local craftsmen. With the support of friends and loved ones, they embarked on the daunting task of building their dream home.
Their incredible journey and triumph against adversity caught the attention and admiration of people all over the world. Their story serves as a testament to the power of resilience, ingenuity, and unwavering determination.
Cara Brookins’ story is a beacon of hope, demonstrating that with unwavering determination, the human spirit can overcome even the most challenging circumstances. Their remarkable achievement not only transformed their lives but also inspired countless others around the globe.
She gained global attention in over 75 nations, catching the interest of people worldwide with over two billion views to her story.
With a collection of eight books to her name, one of them being “Rise: How a House Built a Family,” she skillfully recounts the tremendous challenges she faced while reuniting her family. Her story showcases a remarkable journey of personal growth and resilience.
Today, Cara’s story stands as a testament to the resilience of survivors and a reminder that no matter how dire the situation, there is always hope for a brighter future.
Perhaps, Cara and her children’s remarkable journey is best told in their own words. Watch as they recount their inspiring tale of strength and hope:
One such story is that of Cara Brookins, a mother of four, who, with limited resources, decided to embark on an extraordinary journey that would change the course of her family’s life forever.
Jenny Marr would have been forgiven for thinking there was something wrong with her unborn baby when her doctor had a peculiar look on her face during the first ultrasound...
Little did she know Dr. Lauren Murray was about to change her and her partner’s life forever.
Everyone who has been expecting a baby and has made a visit to the sonographer knows how nerve-wracking and exciting it can be.
To see something appear on that black screen and know it’s a living thing is incredibly emotional. But for Jenny Marr and her partner Chris, it was those things and much more.
The couple, from Grapevine, Texas, met in a local pub and had tried to have a baby for several months. But when Jenny finally got pregnant, she and Chris got the shock of their lives when they went in for a routine ultrasound.
That’s when Jenny realized she wasn’t carrying one baby.
Jenny explained to TODAY: “I was like, ‘Oh no, there’s no heartbeat.’ And, she’s like, ‘No, there is a heartbeat.’ She goes, ‘Y’all, there’s three babies in there.’ And we were just absolutely floored.”
Jenny and her partner Chris were naturally shocked, but the surprises didn’t end there.
Just a week later, on November 19, 2019, they visited a maternal-fetal medicine specialist for a follow-up appointment and got the same odd glance from the technician performing the ultrasound.
“The tech — who was doing the initial (scan) — she gave me a funny look. We were like, ‘Oh what’s going on now?’ We got worried again,’” Chris told TODAY.
“She was really cute. She said, ‘I’m not supposed to say this, but y’all got four babies.’”
In just seven days, they’d gone from expecting one baby to being told they were having FOUR.
Chris said: “I made the joke that I am not coming back because there are going to be five babies next time. We were just shocked. Jumping from three to four was easier to swallow. Just after that we heard they were healthy.”
Dr. Lauren Murray and her colleagues estimated that identical, spontaneous quadruplet births occur in 1 in 11 million or 1 in 15 million births … extremely rare to put it mildly.
“It’s unbelievable. It’ll never happen again in my career. I said, ‘Girl, go buy a few lottery tickets because those are the kind of odds we’re dealing with,’” Murray said. “What a miracle it was.”
Despite risks that one of the babies could pull nutrients away from the others, thus requiring surgery and causing problems, it turned out that this quartet were perfectly ready to share.
“The babies shared incredibly well. There were no incidents on the sonogram even leading up to that where we were worried that one of them, or two or three of them, would be significantly smaller,” Murray said.
So it was that at 28.5 weeks, on March 15, Jenny went into labor.
She was trying to get to 33 weeks but had to deliver early. The babies arrived during the beginning of the coronavirus chaos, but her C-section went well.
Baby Harrison came first, weighing 2 pounds 6 ounces. Hardy came after at 2 pounds 10 ounces, then Henry at 2 pounds 6.7 ounces and finally Hudson, who was 1 pound 15 ounces.
“They were all born in three minutes. It’s incredible,” Jenny said. “We called them our baby birds because they really looked like baby birds.”
Three of the four stayed in the neonatal intensive care unit for 10 weeks to receive oxygen, amongst other things. In early May, though, they came home … and Jenny and Chris couldn’t be happier.
When a year had passed, Jenny talked to DFW Child and gave an update on how her quadruplets were doing.
”They’re all crawling. I have two who will be walking in the next month probably, which means the other two aren’t far behind. They’re into everything. They’re dirty and messy. They’re already such little boys! Eating is just shoveling food into their face as fast as they possibly can. They’re funny and just sweet as can be.”
“We just hope that this little story and our boys bring as much joy to everybody as they bring to us,” Jenny explained.
Today, the quadruplets have turned 3 years and they seemed to be thriving.
Jenny has created an Instagram account where anyone can follow the family’s journey. She has 140,000 followers and Jenny, who previously worked as a dental assistant, often posts updates and shares glimpses of the Marr family’s everyday life – and it’s a busy one!
With such a unique birth, it is natural that many people have questions and are curious about Jenny’s family and birth experience. Jenny says she conceived these boys without any medical or medication assistance.
Many people also ask Jenny how she’s coping with four lively boys.
”I don’t know anything different, and I don’t really have another option! My family had preschools when I was growing up, and 8 weeks was the starting age. I used to sit in with the preschool babies. I was around kids so much that it is like second nature to take care of children,” Jenny says.
”It is what it is. You’ve got to roll with the punches. I remember asking my doctor, “Do I need to go to parenting classes?” She said, “No, you’re going to learn things in the NICU. And there are four of them. Nobody’s going to teach you how to do this.”
People also wonder how Jenny and Chris managed to tell the boys apart.
”Well as their parents we just kind of know. We typically see 4 different faces, but their personalities and voices are so different. For someone who’s just met them though: (in birth order) Harrison is the biggest and has the best hair. Hardy has a chipped front tooth and is super slender. Henry has a chubby face and his hair bounces when he runs. Hudson has the smallest head and a freckle on his forehead. Thats about all I can give you in regards to how to tell them apart,” Jenny says.
Four precious little babies come into the world … what a truly blessed day March 15 was.
Jenny and Chris, I’m delighted for you both. I can’t imagine the memories you’ll create as a family and the love that will be present in your household.
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One day in the summer of 2014, Susan Hickman was out walking when something caught her eye. There on the ground he saw a broken eggshell.
Susan almost kept going, but for some reason, she decided to stop and see if there was anything inside.
And to her surprise, there was!
When she looked inside, Susan found a newborn chick inside. He didn’t have any feathers and his eyes were closed.
Susan looked around to see if there was a nest nearby but couldn’t find one.
Susan knew that if she left the chick there, he wouldn’t survive alone, so she decided to try to save him.
Taking care of a baby bird isn’t easy, though. For the first two weeks, Susan had to feed the bird every 20-30 minutes from sunrise to sunset.
It was an exhaustive process, but Susan refused to give up. She felt a strong bond with the chick and used a small medicine dropper to make sure he got the nutrition he needed.
The bird was a real fighter, and managed to survive the first day…
… And the next day, too.
Susan soon named him Klinger.
He opened his eyes.
He got feathers…
… and eventually, he grew into a large, stately bird.
Talk about a transformation!
During his recovery, Klinger became an essential part of the family.
He got lots of love and care and in return, he brought joy into Susan’s life.
Being a true animal lover, Susan decided to release Klinger back into the wild when he was big enough.
But she also realized that Klinger was domesticated now. He was completely unprepared for life in the wild and wouldn’t survive on his own.
So Susan decided that Klinger simply had to stay with her.
And Klinger doesn’t seem to mind one bit.
Find out more about Susan and Klinger’s story in this video:
Isn’t it wonderful that Susan spotted Klinger and was able to save him! Share if this lovely story moved you, too!
Dylan and Cole Sprouse know that sometimes it takes two.
The adorable identical twin boys, who captured our hearts almost 25 years ago with their playful performance as the precocious little boy on Big Daddy with Adam Sandler, are no longer little. Nor are they boys.
Now handsome 30-year-old men, Dylan and his younger brother by 15 minutes Cole, are not as attached as they were at the start of their careers, but they are still very close.
Born in 1992, the adorable blond boys were only 8 months when they started sharing roles as one toddler or child in commercials, TV and film.
With Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen–of Full House fame–serving as testament, identical twins are a huge resource in Hollywood due to child labor laws that prevent children from working too many hours.
And for the little Sprouses, two of them was better than one.
Their breakout role was as in the TV comedy series, Grace Under Fire, where from 1993 to 1998, they played the son of Brett Butler’s leading character Grace Kelly. Growing up from infants into talking and walking six-year-olds, the twins were extraordinary in sharing the role of Patrick Kelly.
“As Grace’s 8-month-old, it’s impossible to tell at this point if Dylan and Cole Sprouse are the Olsen twins of tomorrow,” writes Tim Grey in Variety.
When they starred as Sandler’s adopted son in the comedy film Big Daddy (1999), they stole every scene with their perfectly timed lines and their playful performance.
Speaking with People in 2022 about Sandler, Cole said, “Perhaps I’m a bit biased because I’ve known him for ages, but I do admire his career. He’s got a really, really wonderful balance between art and commerce that I think is the currency of a real working actor.” Cole continued, “He’s walking that line beautifully and he’s raising up all of his friends at the same time, which I think is incredible.”
From 2000 to 2002, the power pairing of Cole and Dylan was split when Cole played on the hit TV series Friends. Acting as Ben, the young son to Ross Gellar who’s played by David Schwimmer, Cole performed the role on his own, the first role that didn’t include Dylan.
Speaking of his favorite Friends episode that he appeared, “The One with the Holiday Armadillo,” Cole explains, “I remember that quite well. I was infatuated with the costumes, and the practical effects that they had.”
He also revealed that the costumes weren’t his only infatuation. He also had a big crush on his co-star, who played Rachel. In an interview with TODAY, Cole said, “I’m pretty sure I fell in love with Jennifer Aniston, which the whole world had at that point. But I do remember being quite intimidated around her, because of that. I remember blanking on my lines and having kind of stage fright when she sat next to me on the couch in one episode.”
In 2002, Cole and Dylan were reunited and twinning again in the shared role of the young Pistachio Disguisey in the film Master of Disguise.
At this time, the boys were starting to develop unique personalities, which would route their careers as individuals.
That was when they played Zach and Cody in The Suite Life of Zach & Cody, an Emmy-nominated Disney show that ran three seasons starting in 2005. When the series ended, their roles as Zach and Cody crossed the Disney universe into other shows, like Hannah Montana with Miley Cyrus, and in their film, The Suite Life Movie.
Driving young girls wild, the teenage heartthrobs’ popularity was growing, but level-headed, the young men moved onto the next phase and went to New York University, Dylan studying video game design and Zack humanities and archaeology.
“I needed to take a break and step outside myself, I needed a dose of reality, and I needed to see myself in a more objective point of view. And now I think I can enjoy [acting], which is a really fundamental part about being an actor,” Cole said, explaining that the long-running Disney series had him feeling like a machine. “I’m not saying that we didn’t enjoy that time, but it was work. It’s a career and a business, and it got me to college, which is one of the most fantastic gifts I could’ve been given. But I’m glad to be [acting] on my own accord now.”
Both graduating in 2015, Cole returned to television, again acting without his brother.
Their distinct personalities are guiding them on separate journeys, and as individual men, they are no longer sharing one role.
Since 2017, Cole has been playing the lead of Jughead Jones in Riverdale, a supernatural drama TV series based on the characters from the Archie comic books.
He is currently dating French-Canadian model Ari Fournier, whom he met more than two years ago.
Dylan on the other hand, is voicing video game characters and is engaged to the Sports Illustrated model, Barbara Palvin. He is also the co-founder of All-Wise Meadery, a craft brewery in Brooklyn, NY.
Speaking with US Weekly in 2020, Dylan said, “It’s more likely that I will write something for us to work in together, rather than someone approach us. Twin movies are never good! That’s just the universal truth I think the universe has given to us, and so if we can find the right thing then, yeah.”
It’s hard to believe that so many years have passed since we first saw the adorable Sprouse twins on Big Daddy! They both have done some incredible things in and out of Hollywood and we can’t wait to see what they do next.
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