Camille Guaty is officially a mom!
The Prison Break actress, 43, and husband Sy Rhys Kaye welcomed their first child, a son named Morrison Rafael Kaye, on Saturday, Oct. 5, her rep confirms to PEOPLE exclusively.
Baby Morrison was born at 3:41 p.m., weighing 6 lbs., 2 oz., and measuring 20 inches long.
While Rafael is in honor of the new mom’s father, Morrison is a play off the name Morris, Guaty’s husband’s grandfather, who was a big influence in his life.
The couple also loved the name Sonny, a second inspiration for their son’s first name.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Welcome to the World! All of the Celebrity Babies Who’ve Made Their Debuts in 2019
In August, the actress exclusively announced with PEOPLE that she and Kaye were expecting their first child with the help of an egg donor. “The day the nurse called to tell me I was pregnant, I burst out crying!” she said at the time. “I made her say it to me four or five times. I feel so grateful now and can’t wait to meet our son.”
Guaty’s emotional journey to motherhood began nearly six years prior when she and her songwriter-producer husband began trying for a baby naturally. A year later, she and Kaye visited their first in vitro fertilization clinic, where the actress was told her ovarian reserve was “equivalent to that of a 50-year-old.”
“You never think this is going to be your story,” she said. “Women come up to me and say, ‘If you’re 43 and pregnant, I have plenty of time!’ I just want to say, ‘It didn’t happen the way you think it did.’ “
The couple went through five failed rounds of IVF and also tried intrauterine insemination — which involves placing the sperm directly into the uterus — but were still unable to get pregnant.
Two years ago, Guaty visited another doctor in New York who felt confident about her chances of conceiving, and put her on a three-month regimen to start her sixth round of IVF.
“I thought he was the end-all, be-all,” said Guaty. “But then I took such a nosedive in my fertility in those three months that he was like, ‘I don’t know what happened!’ My fertility was pretty much nonexistent.”
Last year, Guaty and Kaye began discussions of using an egg donor. “I honestly had a difficult time wrapping my mind around this choice,” she admitted. “Just a couple of years ago, the idea of another woman’s egg in my body was unfathomable.”
But the star stayed open-minded, and after months of looking, the couple found a donor through an “amazing IVF clinic in Mexico.”
“Sy flew to Mexico to give his sperm deposit, and I FaceTimed him from my trailer while the wardrobe team was putting on my prosthetic belly,” she recalled. “I saw this look on my doctor’s face. He told me our donor had messed up her final shot and ovulated all 17 eggs, so they weren’t retrievable.”
Actress Camille Guaty Is Pregnant with Help from a Donor Egg After Five Failed Rounds of IVF
Despite being “tapped out” both emotionally and financially, Kaye wanted to try again with a new egg donor. But Guaty, who had begun working with foster children during this time, wanted him to consider foster-to-adoption as an option as well.
“After we found a second egg donor, we were told she could only give us two eggs — and then only one embryo matured. That’s when I told my husband, ‘I can’t do this. It’s too much pressure,’ ” she said.
Just as the couple began seeing eye-to-eye and seriously considering adoption, Guaty received the call that she was pregnant. “When we both let go of our expectations of what parenthood was supposed to be, our pregnancy happened with that one golden egg,” she said about their mutual breakthrough.
“I had such faith that I was going to be a mother,” Guaty recalled. “I didn’t know how it was going to turn out, but I realized being a mother means nurturing a child in an environment that will help them grow and flourish. That’s a family.”
Source: Read Full Article