Da Brat and Jesseca “Judy” Dupart are about to embark on a brand-new journey as a couple: parenthood! The couple is expecting their first child together — a baby boy — with Da Brat in her final trimester. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with the couple, who return in Brat Loves Judy season 3, about Brat’s pregnancy and the road to conceiving their baby.
“I feel great. I feel absolutely blessed,” the 49-year-old said. “My stomach is huge, and it’s still growing. I have a few weird things that have never happened to me before, but I’m just taking it all in stride because it’s part of the pregnancy. I know once the baby comes out, everything will be back to normal.”
Judy has kids from a previous relationship, so she’s experienced pregnancy before. The entrepreneur revealed that her best piece of advice for Brat was to “take it all in. “She was kind of fearful in the beginning, and I know how nurturing she is and how loving she is and how appreciative she is for some of the smallest life moments. I figured that this journey would be something impactful for her, so just take it all in.”
As they were undergoing the IVF process, Judy faced some serious health complications. “It was a little difficult,” Judy admitted. “On my side, it’s my egg, so we did an egg retrieval from me. I wound up with hyperstimulation of the ovaries, and it causes blood clots in my lungs, which caused me to be in the hospital for a while. It also caused an enlarged heart. So from there, there were no side effects. I got on blood thinners. Everything is fine now. My heart is back at its normal size, but that was something that we obviously didn’t anticipate.”
The rapper added, “The journey hasn’t been an easy journey, but we’re blessed to be where we are. We’ve definitely had some struggles and some ups and downs.”
The couple decided Brat would carry their child prior to Judy’s health issues. “We talked about it beforehand, but we had decided on her before that even happen to me,” Judy explained. “That was because I felt like she would enjoy the journey. We talked about that and when everything unfolded the way it did, I was like, well, that was perfect.”
Da Brat and Judy believe they’ve “settled” on a name for their baby boy. Their little one will have plenty of Air Jordans to go around.
As for more children, Brat and Judy are leaving their options open for now. Nothing is off the table.
“She has been what she calls an emotional wreck in the pregnancy,” Judy told HollywoodLife. “I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s that emotions heighten during pregnancy. One of the emotional moments that she had was the baby’s not going to have anybody to play with. I said, well, beautiful, if you want to have another one, we could figure that out. So we talked about it a little bit in that moment when she was going through that thing. We talked about maybe a surrogate, but we haven’t made a final decision. That was the first time it had ever come up and we had ever talked about it, but I wanted to make sure to address her in the moment while she was thinking about that.”
Brat Loves Judy returns for season 3 on April 27 on WE tv, and the couple previewed what’s ahead for the couple in the series. Judy’s son comes to live with them for a while, and Brat admitted that it “changed a few things in our household.”
Judy noted that the experience made them realize “how we have different parenting styles. Now that we are bringing a baby into the world, you’ve now interacted with somebody that I’ve raised, and you see what you kind of want to do and you don’t want to do, so now we need to sit down and discuss how we want to do this time around.”
On top of the pregnancy, Brat and Judy teamed up for their first joint collaboration, the haircare line Kaleidoscope X Brat.
“It is for protective styles, and a protective style is something like braids, locs, when you have your hair braided under your wigs, or under your weaves, or whatever, it keeps your hair safe and protected,” Brat said.
Judy added, “I told my wife, I don’t feel like she understands the value of what she can bring to the market. I told her that I wanted to do something with her, so I did the whole nine. We did a licensing deal. I did this by the book, and I wanted her just to get to experience what it’s like to be able to partner with a brand and see the value that she brings versus just thinking, okay, I’m doing this, this is what I’m doing. That’s it. I feel like there’s so much more to attain, and there’s so much that she doesn’t realize that she has the potential in her as far as earning and growing and adding different ventures and doing this and doing that.”