Former Ellen DeGeneres Show child star Sophia Grace Brownlee has no regrets about becoming a young mother.
“I was quite young when I had River. I was 19, which I do feel like is quite young,” Brownlee, 22, said on the Wednesday, February 25, episode of the “Private Story” podcast, referring to her son. “I don’t regret, like, doing anything because I’m quite happy with where I am now.”
Brownlee announced in October 2022 that she was expecting her first baby before giving birth to River in March 2023. The social media star revealed the next year that she was pregnant again. Brownlee gave birth to daughter Athena in January 2025. (Brownlee has not publicly revealed the father of her children.)
“When I had Athena, I was 21, which is a bit more older,” she explained on Wednesday’s episode. “It’s obviously young to have kids, but I don’t really think there’s a right age to have kids as long as you’re ready and you’re mature enough, that’s all that matters.”
Brownlee further acknowledged that, because of her experience on Ellen DeGeneres Show, she was “financially stable” enough to provide for a family without struggling.
“If I wasn’t, like, I would have been struggling a lot,” she said. “So, yeah, I’m blessed to have been in that situation.”
While Brownlee has found a sweet rhythm as a mom of two, she didn’t have the easiest pregnancy and childbirth journey.
“It actually went quite bad with River. It wasn’t a nice experience,” she recalled. “I went into labor naturally, and I was just a week early, which is common. That’s not a problem, and everything was fine. It just, kind of, got bad when you’re actually trying to push the baby out. He was getting really stressed out, and he just wouldn’t come down properly like how [babies] are supposed to.”
Brownlee continued, “Loads of different doctors and surgeons [came into my room], which is so scary. I was, like, ‘What’s happening?’ They were, like, ‘We think we’re going to have to do a C-section because the baby’s getting distressed.’ I was just so scared that they were going to put me to sleep ‘cause that is one of my biggest fears because I think I’m not going to wake up.”
According to Brownlee, her emergency caesarean was “one of the scariest times” in her life.
“I’ve never even been in hospital properly for anything in my life, so I’m laying there in a room full of so many people,” the YouTube star explained. “I’ve got this curtain up in front of me because they don’t want you to see it, and I was numb anyway. I’d had an epidural, which numbs you from the waist down, because I couldn’t handle the pain.”
River was eventually delivered safely, which was a completely different experience from Brownlee’s birth with Athena.
“Because I had a C-section, they were like, ‘We’re going to book you in for another one,’” she said of delivering her second child. “That’s what they like to do, but the midwives were, like, ‘No, we think you can have her naturally, so at least try.’ I did, and it went so quickly. … I was so proud of myself, and I was glad I got to experience a natural birth, which I would choose every time over a C-section.”
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