The couple welcomed their first child together last month.
Heather Rae and Tarek El Moussa are getting real about the struggles they faced with their son Tristan's birth. Speaking to ET's Cassie DiLaura at their home in Orange County, California, the couple opened up about welcoming their newborn last month, and the surgery he required. The couple also gave ET the exclusive first look at their little boy.
"Oh my God, well I got glammed today, so actually took a shower, washed my hair. We love it. It's an amazing experience," the Selling Sunset star said about life as a new mom. "And I just love him so much. Look at him."
"She's just she's everything I expected her to be, meaning she's obsessed with Tristan," Tarek, who is already dad to Taylor, 12, and Brayden 11, who he welcomed with ex-wife Christina Hall, said of how Heather Rae has taken to motherhood. "She takes the best care of him. She's getting no sleep, and the funny thing about Heather is she wants to do all the mom things."
He continued, "She wants to wake up and do the feeding, she wants to do the bath time, so there's no work that she's putting off to anyone else. She's doing everything."
"I love it," Heather added. "I can't imagine not. I just love him."
Despite the couple being in a loved-up newborn bubble with Tristan, his delivery was not an easy one.
"They gave me a pill which softened my cervix. I had a biopsy done like years and years ago, which made my scar tissue build up down there, so my water wasn't breaking. I wasn't going into labor, so they had to kind of speed it along for me," Heather recalled. "They put this thing called a balloon in, and then so everything after that just kind of like started and I think I dilated from a six to an eight in two minutes, then my water broke. And they were like, 'Let's push.'"
That's when it got scary, the couple shared.
"She was pushing and pushing, and then the doctor kept looking at the monitor and noticed that the heart rate was dropping, and then she called nurses, and everybody comes running into the room and that happened with Brayden," Tarek shared. "And with Brayden, we had to go to emergency c-section, so I thought for sure, with Tristan it was going to be emergency c-section, and then the doctor looks at Heather and the doctor says okay, 'One last big push. This is the last one, give it everything you have.' And she pushed, and you could see the blood vessels popping in her face and her chest and her neck, and they put a vacuum on this guy's head, and he came right out."
"I started crying because they were like, 'His heart's dropping, it's staying low. This is it, you have to get him out right now,' and so I started crying and they both looked at me, the doctor and Tarek and they're like, 'Heather, this is your moment. Like you have to get him out,'" Heather continued. "And I'm like, 'Okay.' So, four pushes. He came out the last push and Tarek's like, 'His head. I see his head.'"
"They put him on my chest, and I was in like, a state of shock," she added. "It was a surreal moment. I think like, I didn't know what was going on because I had my eyes closed and then they put him on me. It was just like the best moment ever."
Tristan also had to have surgery to fix his tongue, lip and cheek ties.
"So, tongue tie, cheek tie, and lip tie, so, Tristan had all of them," Heather shared.
"It's connected," Tarek added. "So if your cheek is tied, it's connected to your mouth. So the tongue tie, you can't move the tongue cause it's stuck, right? So, when the baby was trying to feed it's like sucking on a straw with holes in it, so that's why he couldn't feed."
"He wasn't able to latch," Heather explained. "And it was like, he was burning so many calories when he was trying to suck and latch and eat, so he lost too much weight because he wasn't able to eat fast enough. A lot of babies that's not caught right away, so luckily I had brought in a lactation specialist who's also a tongue tie specialist, so she's the one that caught it."
While Heather said the surgery didn't hurt -- it's a procedure done using a laser -- the new mom said she still cried seeing her baby in pain.
"It's hard on the parents because he's crying during it. It doesn't hurt, but it's annoying for him, so for us, it's like, 'Aw, my baby is crying,'" Heather said before getting emotional.
The whole process has given her an appreciation for mothers, who she called "superhumans."
"I have this appreciation for moms out there and they're super, they're superhumans," she added. "Going through everything, and just being so connected with the baby in general -- I've learned so much about babies."
In addition to Tristan, the couple has another new baby dropping, their new HGTV show, The Flipping El Moussas. As for showcasing their family on the new show and in projects in the future, Tarek said they're on board.
"We're kind of -- we're a TV family, like, let's just be real," Tarek said. "When I first got on TV, my daughter, Taylor, who's now 12, was in Christina's belly. So, I mean the kids were born on TV. They were raised through TV. The world knows us, and we're big on sharing our life and our love. Especially our love for each other and real estate, of course."
See their big, beautiful family when The Flipping El Moussas premieres March 2 on HGTV.
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