Whew! Blake Lively is happy the world finally knows she and Ryan Reynolds are expecting their fourth child together, a source exclusively tells Us Weekly.
“Blake is relieved that the secret is out. She held it in until she couldn’t anymore!” the insider shares. “She loves dressing up her baby bump and wanted to make a statement. … She’s truly glowing.”
Lively, 35 — who shares daughters James, 7, Inez, 5, and Betty, 2 with Reynolds, 45 — revealed she is expecting baby No. 4 during the 10th annual Forbes Power Women’s Summit on Thursday, September 15. The Gossip Girl alum posed for photos in a sparkly gold mini dress on the red carpet as she showed off her growing baby bump, an eyewitness told Us.
The Simple Favor star and Canada native, who began dating in 2011 and tied the knot a year later, have made a habit of finding fun ways to announce details about their kids while fiercely protecting their privacy. In July 2020, good pal Taylor Swift used all of their daughter’s names for songs in her album Folklore, subtly announcing the couple’s third child is named “Betty.”
Reynolds opened up about the nod the following year, telling Jess Cagle that he and his wife trust Swift, 32, “implicitly.”
“She’s very sensitive to any of that stuff. And obviously, the song has nothing to do with our kids other than our kids’ names,” he explained. “But I mean, what an honor. We thought it was pretty damn amazing. We still do. You know, I still walk down the street and shake my head thinking, ‘I can’t believe that happened.’”
In the Grammy-winner’s 2017 album, Reputation, the pair’s first-born James was featured. The little one can be heard saying the word “Gorgeous” in the eponymous song’s opening seconds.
While the Deadpool star told Access in November 2021 that he “loves being a girl dad” and wouldn’t have it any other way, he admitted that living in a home with all females is “absolute mayhem.”
“Every day, you’re just clinging by the skin of your teeth,” he joked during an interview with Today a month later. “I was always afraid that I would have boys, but now that I have girls, I should have always been afraid. They’re just as rough.”
In June, a second insider exclusively told Us that the duo work hard at a “protective” parenting style to make sure their kids grow up outside of the spotlight.
“Blake and Ryan have done a really great job at raising them away from the public eye and having as normal as a life they can,” the source explained. “They’ve always wanted to make sure their children’s lives were kept private.”
In 2016, Lively spoke to Marie Claire about her desire to not “rob” her children of a normal childhood. “My husband and I chose a profession and a side effect of that is your personal life is public,” the Shallows actress shared. “Our child hasn’t had the opportunity to choose whether or not she wants her personal life to be public or not. So in order to give her as much normality as possible, we want her to have a childhood like we had. … We don’t ever want to rob them of what we had, because we’d feel really selfish.”
Reynolds echoed his wife’s sentiments in October 2021, when he announced his plans to step back from acting. “I’m just trying to create a little bit more space for my family,” the Free Guy star told The Hollywood Reporter. “You know, you really don’t get that time back.”
