Good news forGolnesa “GG” Gharachedaghi!
TheShahs of Sunsetstar, 36, is pregnant with her first child, she exclusively tells PEOPLE.
“This is what I wanted my entire life,” Gharachedaghi raves. “When little girls were talking about their perfect husband and their perfect weddings, I was talking about the 10 kids I was going to have.”
“I just always knew I’d be a mom someday,” she adds. “I’m finally at this point where I’m ready to make this move. I can’t wait to give this child a life of unconditional love without judgment, the same way my mom has shown me my whole life. I just wish she could teach me how to cook! I still haven’t figured that out yet … ”
Gharachedaghi, who lives in Los Angeles, is single and plans to raise her child on her own. She used a sperm donor, and successfully completed a round of in vitro fertilization in August.
Charles Sykes/Getty Images
“What I went through a couple of months ago is so traumatizing,” Gharachedaghi recalls. “Right now, it’s still very scary for me.”
“I heard about a really good donor concierge company, who scavenges through the data from all the sperm banks in the nation and some neighboring countries to find you what you’re looking for,” Gharachedaghi remembers.
Once the right candidate was chosen, the IVF process began. First came the egg retrieval, then the fertilization, development and testing of the embryos for upwards of 250 genetic disorders.
“It took a long time, but I walked through each step with this knowledge and excitement that I was going to be a mom someday,” Gharachedaghi tells PEOPLE.
Golnesa “GG” Gharachedaghi.Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images
The embryo transfer finally happened in April. And while she was fine at first, Gharachedaghi could tell in the following weeks that something was wrong.
“It was an ectopic pregnancy,” theBravostar recounts. “The only option was to terminate it — in my case, through the distribution of a very strong drug called methotrexate.”
“That was probably the most traumatizing moment of my life,” Gharachedaghi admits. “Literally, just a couple of days before, I was celebrating. And now, I was mourning.”
“The sac wasn’t dissolving and it was on the verge of rupturing, which would have killed me,” she tells PEOPLE. “I’m lucky I got it in enough time.”
Doctors decided to remove her second tube when they noticed it, too, was dilated — something Gharachedaghi has been told is likely related to her autoimmune disease (she has long suffered from rheumatoid arthritis). The removals meant now that the only way she could getpregnant moving forward was through IVF.
All of this left Gharachedaghi feeling angry, depressed and lost.
“For weeks, [I was] playing the, ‘Who am I supposed to be mad at?’ game,” Gharachedaghi says. “I wanted to blame someone and I couldn’t. I kept blaming myself because no one had an answer. I checked back into therapy, to try to figure out how to work through this all.”
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Eventually, Gharachedaghi decided to try again. “I knew if I sat around being sad and isolated, it wouldn’t be healthy,” she says. “I had to try it again.”
Her second IVF transfer round was on Aug. 29. “You think this is supposed to be such an exciting time, but this second time around, I was sort of numb,” Gharachedaghi says. “When Iwent in for the first ultrasound, I couldn’t breathe. I had anxiety for two days. I couldn’t sleep, thinking, ‘This is going to happen again.’ ”
“Sure enough, I had the ultrasound, and we saw [the embryo]. A week later, we saw the heart vessel pumping,” she adds. “So I’ve slowly been feeling more and more relaxed about it.”
Golnesa “GG” Gharachedaghi.Paul Archuleta/Getty
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Gharachedaghi has a strong support system around her, especially in her “amazing” parents.
“My mom is such a soldier for me,” she says. “She’s literally my punching bag. These hormones are no f–ing joke. I have to inject myself every morning in the butt with just pure hormones and I just rage. I cry for random reasons. And my mom’s just been there for it all.”
Ultimately, though, she says she’s ready to do this alone — and hasn’teven started dating sinceher divorce.
“If I’m lucky to meet someone who I vibe with and it works, that’s great, but I’m not interested in getting married in the future and don’t necessarily see myself with a forever life partner,” Gharachedaghi explains, adding, “My forever will be my child.”
source: people.com
