Gypsy Rose Blanchard announced on Tuesday she’s pregnant, expecting her first child with boyfriend Ken Urker.
“So, I know the rumors have been flying around for quite some time now,” Blanchard said on YouTube. “I’m happy to announce that I am 11 weeks pregnant.”
The 32-year-old Louisiana native, who served eight years in prison for the murder of her allegedly abusive mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, said she’s now due to become a mom in January.
“This was not planned at all. It was completely unexpected,” she added. “But we’re both very excited to take on this new journey of parenthood.”
Blanchard was previously married to Louisiana school teacher Ryan Anderson before announcing their separation on a private Facebook page in March, just three months after she was released from prison.
She confirmed to TMZ in April that she’d reunited with Urker, whom she first met as a pen pal in 2017 while she was behind bars. They got engaged in October of 2018, but called off their relationship the following August.
Blanchard posted pregnant photos of herself with Urker on her Instagram account Tuesday, and included a link to their baby registry in an Instagram Story.
Blanchard admitted the situation her child is being born into is unusual, but told her 22,000 YouTube subscribers that she “couldn’t be happier.”
Blanchard’s turbulent upbringing was the focus of HBO’s 2017 documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest,” and later the Hulu scripted series “The Act.” Both projects alleged Dee Dee kept the little girl under her control by falsely convincing both the child and doctors she was suffering from muscular dystrophy, leukemia and other conditions.
Blanchard reportedly spent much of her youth undergoing medical procedures, using a feeding tube, taking medication and relying on a wheelchair to get from place to place — none of which she needed.
“I want to be everything my mother wasn’t,” she said in her pregnancy announcement.
Blanchard was sentenced to a decade behind bars after convincing her former boyfriend, Nicholas Godejohn, to carry out the stabbing death of her mother. The two teens went on the run after the killing, but were soon apprehended.
Godejohn was convicted of first-degree murder in 2018, and received a life sentence.