Holding out hope. Jamie Otis has continued to document her fertility journey since she and Doug Hehner began trying to have children in 2016.
The Married at First Sight alums, who wed in March 2014, suffered a pregnancy loss two years later at 17 weeks. The Wifey 101 author was told by multiple doctors at the time to terminate her pregnancy because she had “no amniotic fluid at all.”
The Bachelor alum explained in a September 2016 Woman’s Day essay that her son Johnathan’s prognosis was “poor,” explaining, “The baby wouldn’t be able to develop the way he was supposed to, and if he did survive, he would most likely have brain damage and wouldn’t be able to see or hear. The decision came down to whether or not we wanted to chance it and see if our son would develop properly.”
The New York native delivered the infant and was able to hold him and take photos before saying her goodbyes.
“We put together a memory box where we saved all of our baby’s ultrasound photos, his footprints on cardstock, the blanket the hospital gave us and mementos from the day I told Doug we were expecting,” Otis wrote. “Writing and documenting all of the feelings I had from the time I found out I was pregnant — even the miserable ones like morning sickness — helps me remember my child. He can’t just be gone in history because he was never born. I hope that he is in heaven, bouncing on clouds and happy, and that he knows that he was wanted and loved.”
She and Hehner welcomed their rainbow baby, daughter Henley, in April 2017. Before giving birth to their son, Hendrix, three years later, Otis suffered two miscarriages — one in September 2018 and another in January 2019.
The former reality stars want to continue expanding their family but put baby No. 3 “on the back burner” in August 2021 amid a “rough patch” in their marriage.
“It’s not like we are preventing it, but we aren’t scheduling and going at it as aggressively as we were a couple months back. So we are trying, but not trying if that makes sense,” the Married at First Sight: Unfiltered host wrote via Instagram at the time. “I just know in my heart I am supposed to have more children. I genuinely don’t feel like our family is complete yet. It’s hard to explain, but I have this really strong feeling that I’m meant to have more children living on earth and being part of this little family we’ve created.”
Keep scrolling to read Otis’ honest quotes over the years about her struggles to conceive.
