Gypsy Rose Blanchard Answers Everyone's Questions in First Interview After Announcing Pregnancy (Exclusive)

"All the things that I wanted in a mother, I want to give to this baby," Blanchard, who is 11 weeks pregnant, tells PEOPLE

Gypsy Rose Blanchard and her ex-fiancé-turned-current boyfriend Ken Urker's lives took an unexpected turn on May 24.

That day, the couple found out that Blanchard is pregnant. The two conceived a month earlier after they were seen together holding hands, cuddling and kissing at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on April 29.

"I was very surprised," Blanchard, 32, tells PEOPLE over Zoom on Tuesday, July 9 — just a few hours after she announced she was expecting her first baby in a tearful YouTube video. She says she is 11 weeks along and her due date is in January of next year.

After taking a pregnancy test at her father Rod and stephmother Kristy's home in Cut Off, La., Blanchard turned to Kristy and asked her to read it. "Can you make sure this test says what I think it says?" she recalls asking. When she handed the test over, the second line was faintly pink.

Related: Gypsy Rose Blanchard Is Pregnant, Expecting First Baby with Boyfriend Ken Urker

"Girl, you're pregnant," Kristy told her with tears in her eyes. "Oh my God," Blanchard recalls thinking. She had recently been to the doctor and believed she was having issues ovulating and couldn't conceive easily.

"I literally had taken that out of my mind as a possibility," she tells PEOPLE. Then, Blanchard took another test to be sure. It was positive again. "I'm pregnant!" she gasped, adding, "My dad is going to kill me!"

Moments later, the two FaceTimed with Urker, 31, to tell him the exciting news.

"His face was priceless," Kristy tells PEOPLE over the phone. "He just had a big smile on his face. It's such a blessing and it's still unreal. They will be great parents and cherish every minute of it," she adds. "When they hold their baby for the first time, they won't be able to imagine their life without their child. Everything just melts away, even when she gets a lot of hate about it."

Blanchard and Urker rekindled their relationship after having previously been engaged while Blanchard was incarcerated for her role in the murder of her mother Dee Dee Blanchard. After two years, the couple broke off their engagement in 2019, and Blanchard went on to marry Ryan Anderson in 2022 while she was still in prison.

Blanchard, who was released in December 2023, filed for divorce from Anderson a few months later, in April. On June 3, Urker moved to Louisiana from Texas to be closer to Blanchard.

Related: Gypsy-Rose's Stepmom Kristy Blanchard Reunited Her and Ken Urker. Now He's Moving to La. for Her (Exclusive)

"I'm not going to say that I think that a baby will help a marriage or a relationship, because obviously there's the added stress. I know that realistically, there's going to be arguments too," says Blanchard. "But [Ken and I] both come from divorced parents and one thing we absolutely agreed on from day one, even back when we were dating in 2017, is that when we have a child, we will stick together for the long haul. This is a forever thing because we don't want our child to grow up in a broken home."

Blanchard, who was the victim of Munchausen syndrome by proxy at the hands of her mother, says she has reflected on what kind of mother she wants to be.

"I want to be kind, that my kids come to me for any kind of advice, just like my stepmother," she says. "I have seen how she has parented her children — and I think she's a kick-ass mom. She's supportive and not overbearing. She lets her kids find their dreams while also being able to pick up the pieces when those dreams fall apart sometimes — so that's kind of the mantra I want to live by."

For decades, Blanchard's mother Dee Dee harmed and controlled her. She was subjected to painful medical abuse and spent years being told she had serious illnesses, including leukemia and muscular dystrophy. Blanchard also claimed that she was chained to the bed for weeks after she tried to escape.

Now, she wants to be everything her mother Dee Dee wasn't. "All the things that I wanted in a mother, I want to give to this baby," she says. "My mother told me I was never going to get married, raise a family, have kids or do any of that. So, to be here, standing on my own two feet and expecting my first baby, that's something I've reached as an achievement and a personal goal. I thank God every day that I am now having this second chance at life with a kid of my own."

Blanchard continues, "The way my mother parented me is definitely not the way I'm going to be. We always say for the next generation, we want to be better than we were raised. And so, for me, I think that couldn't be any more truthful.

"I have learned from the experience of the trauma of everything not to do."

Related: Pregnant Gypsy-Rose Blanchard Cries as She Says She 'Wants to Be Everything My Mother Wasn't' as a New Mom

Last month, Blanchard had been struggling with auditory nightmares of her mom. While Kristy was sound asleep, Blanchard heard screaming in the middle of the day. "She said she heard this scary scream, but I didn't hear anything. It was quiet in the house and outside. She came in worried checking on me, but she was really scared," Kristy explains.

The two immediately embraced and hugged each other. "I told her, 'I'll always be here for you.' Gypsy often had nightmares of getting out of prison and her mom would be there. It happened a lot. As far as I know, the scream she heard was of her mother," she continues. "It breaks my heart. But I will always be there for her, Ken and the new baby."

In 2016, Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for conspiring with her ex-boyfriend Nicholas “Nick” Godejohn, whom she met online, to kill her 48-year-old mother. Dee Dee was stabbed to death in her Springfield, Mo., home on June 9, 2015, as Gypsy waited in the bathroom. Godejohn is currently serving life in prison.

"That's not something that will go away overnight," Blanchard says of the crime. "That is a forever journey of forgiveness that I will be on. I have not made peace with what happened. That's something that I'm working toward in therapy, but nobody could put a timestamp on when that healing will be done or will happen or when I'll feel better about something. It's a forever process."

During a recent episode of Lifetime's Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up, which airs on Mondays, Blanchard told her half sister Mia that she wasn't ready for motherhood. At the time — while still with Anderson — she thought she could be pregnant with his child but wasn't ready to start a family with him.

By March, the couple were at odds and had a bitter fight, according to what Blanchard's friend Nadiya Vizier previously shared with PEOPLE. Mia, a college student studying to be a nurse, encouraged Blanchard to take an emergency contraceptive.

"I don't regret taking my sister's advice at all," says Blanchard. "I'm happy I took it. With everything that was going on with Ryan and me and the instability of our marriage, it wasn't the right time for me then."

Related: Inside Gypsy Rose Blanchard's Troubled Marriage: What Went Wrong with Ryan Anderson? (Exclusive)

"She definitely wasn't ready with Ryan," Kristy tells PEOPLE. "She wouldn't have taken Plan B if she was. We all know Gypsy is going to do what she wants at the end of the day. I mean, who doesn't?"

Anderson told PEOPLE in May that he was "blinded by how fast the events took place."

Related: Gypsy Rose Blanchard Officially Files for Divorce After Announcing Separation from Husband

With their first divorce hearing on July 29, Blanchard says "timing is not where we wanted it to be" when it comes to the pregnancy.

"I'm still going through a divorce . . . However, I take it in stride, move forward and I couldn't be happier. With Ken, we were both very aware of this responsibility and I never felt like I didn't want to or couldn't take this on with him," she adds. "We are going to do it together. We are going to be parents."

Next month, Kristy and her daughter Mia are planning a sex reveal party for the couple. "Gypsy did a blood test to know the gender, but neither wanted to know," she says. "They wanted it to be a surprise. So, I'm the only one who knows the baby's sex right now."

Blanchard says she would be happy with a boy or a girl. "As long as the baby is healthy, I think that's what anybody would want."

Her stepmother says the couple will likely raise the baby in her home until they can move in together when Blanchard's parole ends in 11 months.

For about six months, she and Urker will travel back and forth between homes to care for their child. "He's going to have to stay at my parents' house for a couple of days and vice versa. But until I'm off parole, I can't move in with him or us get a house. So, we'll have to work around that schedule."

Today, Blanchard says she's focused on prioritizing her health and the baby's.

"I'm making sure I'm taking my prenatal vitamins and with the mood swings and the symptoms, I just haven't even had any extra time to even communicate with anyone," she says. "I've been pretty busy. It was also tough to be tight-lipped about this. I wanted to announce it on my terms and in a certain way, but keeping this secret for so long was worrisome. I didn't want it to be leaked," she says. "It would have robbed me of the joy of announcing it to my friends, family and ultimately the public."

Blanchard says that although negativity often surrounds her on social media, she hasn't looked at any of the backlash to her pregnancy news. "But listen, I understand where the public is coming from," she shrugs. "I think every parent questions whether they're ready. I'm currently in therapy for my sanity and my mental well-being and I checked all the boxes to make sure I'm stable," she says. "All I can say is that I have a strong support system, and Ken and I are in a very good place."

Blanchard says that although she's nervous about potty training in the future, she's excited about seeing her baby's milestones.

"All those moments that you look at your life and you're like, 'Oh my God, it's like a flash,' " she says. "I can't wait to have those first steps, the first cry, the first scraped knee, all those firsts. That's the little milestones that I look forward to having," she says. "I can't wait to be a mom."

The season finale of Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up airs July 22 at 9/8c on Lifetime.

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