Alexa PenaVega and Carlos PenaVega are open to welcoming another baby two years after their daughter Indy was stillborn.
“We talk about … having one last baby, if we can,” Carlos, 37, wrote in the afterword of the couple’s Joy Isn’t Canceled: What Grief Taught Us About Pain, Peace, and Purpose memoir. “Those conversations feel hopeful in a way I didn’t think they ever would.”
Alexa, 38, and Carlos revealed in April 2024 that her pregnancy with their fourth child ended in a stillbirth. (The couple, who have been married since 2014, also share sons Ocean and Kingston, as well as daughter Rio.)
Alexa’s pregnancy with Indy was plagued by a number of complications, including blood loss, that required multiple hospitalizations. In Joy Isn’t Canceled, Alexa and Carlos open up about finding solace in their faith while grieving Indy’s death.
“Grief changed me,” Carlos acknowledged in the epilogue. “I had to stop pretending everything was OK when it wasn’t. I had to learn how to say what I was really thinking and feeling, even when it scared me. That changed me, and it changed our marriage too.”
The Spy Kids actress and the Big Time Rush musician have continued to honor Indy’s memory in the years since her death.
“Indy’s life is so full. She may be in heaven, but, like, she is so full,” Alexa recalled on the “Dear Future Husband” podcast in August. I didn’t grow up thinking about death, you know, ‘cause it’s scary. Death has lost its sting. We have felt the valley, and I think we feared the valley so much because everyone told us to fear the valley, but in the valley with God, there are diamonds.”
She continued at the time, “The valley is loaded with rubies and gold and gems and the things that everyone is so afraid to go get, you know, and here we are, like, swimming in luxury in the worst time of our lives because He was just there for us.”
Alexa further revealed how Indy’s loss strengthened her marriage.
“When her loss happened, it was still a big blow, but [God’s] peace was so evident and so all over our lives, and the way he used her life to ignite our family,” Alexa noted. “I hear about these couples who end up breaking up after the loss of a child and it hurts my heart so much because, for us, it ignited us. It was, like, the fan to the flame that [made us] so much more intentional with each other. Walls were broken.”
Joy Isn’t Canceled: What Grief Taught Us About Pain, Peace and Purpose is out now.
