Trying different tactics. Pregnant Lauren Burnham and Arie Luyendyk Jr. got creative conceiving their twins after a previous miscarriage.
“I did ovulation tracking,” the Shades of Rose designer, 29, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, February 3, while promoting their YouTube channel. “Doing that was great because I learned what my cycle was, but it also stressed us out a time.”
Her husband, 39, chimed in that they felt “too much pressure” to perform during “peak fertility” periods. “Oh, my goodness, 20 days in a row?” the former Bachelor joked with Us.
Having sex was “no longer fun,” Burnham explained. “After that, I was like, ‘All right, fine. I either need to stop using them or just not tell you about the results of the ovulation test.’ And that seemed to work a lot better for us.”
The Bachelor Nation members also used natural essential oils the month that they got pregnant with their twins. “I was like, ‘Oh, whatever, this might work. It might not, but I’m not going to put all my eggs in that basket,’” the Virginia native recalled. “So, I started using it and little did we know that month we got pregnant. And I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this stuff is gold. It worked.’”
The former reality stars exclusively told Us in August 2020 that they were actively trying to conceive a sibling for their 20-month-old daughter, Alessi. The fashion designer documented their unsuccessful attempts via Instagram, telling her followers the following month that she felt “discouraged.”
Burnham was “surprised” to be struggling, she told Us on Wednesday, calling her mom and aunts “Fertile Myrtles” who “never had issues” getting pregnant.
“It was never something that was popped into my head as a problem,” the former ABC personality said. “And then obviously we had Alessi [with] were no issues there. Then we had the miscarriage, which was shocking. And then we had six months of trying to conceive again after that when everyone’s saying you’re the most fertile after you have a miscarriage. For us, that wasn’t true.”
Luyendyk Jr. added that it felt like a “roller-coaster” and his wife “dreaded” taking her pregnancy test every month. It would “ruin [her] day,” while he tried to stay “Mr. Optimistic.”
The pair shared their pregnancy news in December 2020, announcing the sex of their twins the following month — a baby boy and girl.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
