“Meet Valentina StellaMaris Duffy,” she captioned her Instagram reveal at the time. “She is the sweetest, most perfect thing we have ever seen. It’s a wonderful life!”
Rachel, 47, added on Facebook: “She was born last week, one month before her due date. She is doing great, though still in the NICU until she learns to eat on her own. I’m home now, trying to recover from my first C-section (hats off to all the c-section moms out there — I had no idea!) and working hard with my breast pump to keep up with her growing appetite. When we visit with her at the hospital, the kids fight over who can hold her — I don’t blame them! She’s the sweetest, most perfect angel we have ever seen.”
The little one was born with “a heart defect (2 holes in the heart and valves that need to be fixed.” She also has Down Syndrome, and her mom wrote that the “extra chromosome certainly made her EXTRA cute.”
In August, Sean, also 47, announced that he would step down the following month ahead of his wife’s fall due date. “Recently, we’ve learned that our baby, due in late October, will need even more love, time, and attention due to complications, including a heart condition,” the Wisconsin native wrote on Facebook at the time. “With much prayer, I have decided that this is the right time for me to take a break from public service in order to be the support my wife, baby and family need right now.”
The Republican representative, who also shares Evita, 19, Xavier, 17, Lucia-Belen, 15, John-Paul, 13, Paloma, 11, Maria-Victoria, 9, Margarita, 5, and Patrick, 3, with the Fox Nation host added, “I will be forever grateful for and humbled by the faith and sacred trust you have put in me all these years. I am especially grateful for the prayers said on behalf of our family. We hope they keep coming. I will miss being your Congressman, but I am also looking forward to having more time with my family, being home for more birthdays and hockey games, and having time to enjoy and care for our new baby girl, who is already so loved by our family.”
The following month, the Real World: Boston alum expanded on their baby’s “complications” on The View.
“We have some holes in the heart and are gonna need open-heart surgery. The baby … could have some other developmental challenges, so we just wanted to create more space in our life,” Duffy explained. “As any political family, I have eight kids and we always evaluate what is the right decision at the right time. … There are 435 members of Congress. There is only one Duffy dad. So I made the choice to spend a little more time with Rachel and the kids and find a career path that gives me more time.”
He and the Real World: San Francisco alum wed in 1999.
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