Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriend Karissa Shannon is pregnant and expecting her first baby.
“I’m pregnant,” the Girls Next Door alum, 36, said during a Friday, August 28, appearance on Lisa Guerrero’s “Unleashed” podcast.
Shannon added that she is “so excited” at the idea of becoming a mother.
“I’m seven and a half weeks right now, and I’ve already had an ultrasound,” she shared. “I’m really excited. My partner is very excited. It’s obviously my first kid and it’s his first time. Everything’s happening — everything I wanted. It’s making this year so perfect for me.”
Shannon explained that she is so grateful to be pregnant because trying to conceive was a “struggle.”
“We were trying to conceive for a couple months and nothing was happening. I kept taking tests and it was just coming up negative,” she recalled. “I started thinking it wasn’t going to happen for me.”
Shannon confessed that she started seeing a specialist and underwent multiple tests. At one point during the testing process, pre-cancerous cells were discovered in her cervix.
“It was very scary for me and hard for me to wrap my head around because I fully didn’t understand what was going on,” she reflected, adding that her previous pap smear results indicated she was fine. “I’m happy [my doctor] found it but it just shows you women need to be more informed and go get additional testing … had I let it keep going I don’t know what would have happened down the line or if I’d even be pregnant right now.”
Karissa and her twin sister Kristina Shannon were both Hefner’s girlfriends. The twins lived in the Playboy mansion from 2008 to 2010. They appeared on the final season of Girls Next Door, which aired from 2009 to 2010.
Following their time in the Playboy mansion, Karissa and Kristina, also 36, appeared on several other reality shows including Celebrity Big Brother U.K., Botched and Rob & Chyna. The pair stepped away from the limelight in 2017.
Last year, Karissa and Kristina sat down for a rare interview to talk about their decision to pivot from the entertainment industry.
“Kristina and I decided to move. We didn’t know where to go, so we decided to go back to where we were born and leave L.A.,” Karissa said in an April 2025 interview with People. “We sold the beauty salon we owned at the time, and said, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here and live a simple life. Let’s just start healing.'”
The sisters ultimately settled in Michigan for a new start.
“I feel like out of all of this, God was humbling us,” Kristina told the outlet. “He was humbling us and letting us know, ‘I have another plan for you.’ He’s restoring us and that’s what we feel like now. We are completely different people, but still ourselves.”
