Soaking wet from the shower, Brisbane Broncos captain Darius Boyd wept like a baby on discovering that he is set to become a father for the second time.
“We were both crying, we were so excited,” chuckles Kayla, the NRL star’s glamorous wife, as she strokes her bump.
“It hasn’t been easy. We’ve had our fair share of challenges with falling pregnant and so many other things, but it has definitely been well worth
the journey.
“We’d been trying to have another baby for nearly two years but it turned out to be really difficult. We even ended up doing a round of IVF in January last year, which didn’t work, so we were really disappointed.
“We’d given ourselves until May this year to try IVF again – and then, on February 10, we suddenly found out we were expecting! It still doesn’t seem real, to be honest. We don’t want to wish away our days, but we just want it to hurry up so we can meet our new little one.”
Today the future looks bright at the Boyd’s Brisbane home where the couple’s 3-year-old daughter, Willow, is already rehearsing to become a big sister and sharing the family’s baby news with anyone who will listen.
Nobody could have predicted such a joyous outcome back in July 2014, when a deeply depressed Darius admitted himself to three weeks’ rehab after Kayla walked out on their marriage, unable to deal with his demons.
The Aussie and Queensland State of Origin representative’s ‘black dog’ was really biting as a result of poor on-field form, the crippling injury suffered by his Newcastle Knights best mate Alex McKinnon and his own traumatic childhood.
Darius, whose single mother left him with his grandmother when he was just 15, never knew his father’s identity and still doesn’t, despite a couple of potential candidates coming forward for DNA tests.
“I’ve left it there,” says softly spoken Darius, 31. “I just want to grow my own little family. That’s why it’s pretty special to see this little one coming along.
“I was an only child and sometimes, seeing Willow around other kids, I felt she was lonely and needed a sibling. Now there will always be someone there for
her and that’s what I’m so excited about.”
Stylist and blogger Kayla, also 31, had been feeling ‘a bit off’ the day she discovered she was pregnant again. On the way home from a beach trip to the Gold Coast she asked Darius to stop at the local pharmacy, where she bought a pregnancy test.
“I didn’t really think I was pregnant,” she recalls. “Every other test had been negative for more than 18 months. But this time there was the faintest blue line. I couldn’t believe it. Oh my God!
“I ran upstairs, where Darius was in the shower and showed it to him, held it up. He was all wet and we were hugging each other and then we just both started crying.”
After their long struggle to conceive again, the couple could hardly believe their good fortune. Previously, Kayla suffered a devastating miscarriage in 2016, following the death of her adored grandmother.
A few months later she was cruelly trolled after blogging that she had terminated another pregnancy because ‘it wasn’t the right time’ to become a mother again.
“I felt sad, I felt lost, I felt confused, I felt scared s–tless,” she wrote in an explanation to followers. Expecting Willow, she had struggled with hyperemesis gravidarum – a complication characterised by severe vomiting and nausea – for seven-and-a-half months.
“Fortunately, I haven’t had anything like that this time,” smiles Kayla, who already knows she and Darius are expecting another little girl come August.
“We had to find out the sex for Willow, who really wanted a sister.
“She’s so happy, she’s been telling everyone at kindy, and when she gets really carried away she says it’s twins. There’s only one in there, I promise, but even with just one more girl Darius is going to be a bit outnumbered!”
Not that her ‘big softie’ cares one bit. “This is what life is all about; your family, your support network, your friends,” grins Darius, hugging cute-as-a-button Willow. “We’ve been through some hard times, so I’m very lucky and very grateful to have what I have now, with another child on the way.”
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