Vanessa Lachey had a lot to say, and a lot of it upset the infertility community in the wrong way.
For pestering the cast of Netflix’s “Love is Blind” with questions about which of the newlyweds would be the first to welcome a child during the show’s long-awaited but ill-fated live reunion on Sunday, Lachey, 42, , who co-hosted the special with her husband Nick, 49, is coming under fire from some women who have had trouble conceiving.
“Were any of my fellow infertility warriors triggered by Vanessa Lachey’s annoying baby talk in season 4?” Jen Walski, a married housewife, ranted in her TikTok rebuke about the embattled TV personality, that she is a mother of three.
She went on to note that Lachey’s intrusive investigation into the cast’s pregnancy plans made her “uncomfortable”.
“They need to fire Vanessa and Nick,” Walski insisted, in part, “and hire someone who can understand where these people are coming from.”
And sadly, there are millions of couples across the country who have first-hand experience with conception problems.
In the US, 19% of married women between the ages of 15 and 49, with no previous childbirth, are unable to become pregnant after one year of trying, according to the CDC. The agency also finds that 26% of women in the group have difficulty becoming pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term, a problem known as impaired fertility.
Lachey’s representatives did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
While hosting the broadcast event over the weekend, Lachey repeatedly asked the season’s three surviving couples, “Who will give me our first ‘Love is Blind’ baby?” before referring to whether each couple was really “trying” to get pregnant.
Before closing the show, he featured a taped cameo of veteran “Love is Blind” contestant Bartise Bowden, who, while cradling her newborn son Hayden, also asked, “Who will be the first to become a father?” .
However, before married couples Brett Brown and Tiffany Pennywell, Zack Goytowski and Bliss Poureetezadi Goytowski, or Kwame Appiah and Chelsea Griffin could respond to the video query, Lachey chimed in, saying, “Okay, seriously, if that doesn’t do that your ovaries burn, I don’t know.
But alas, his “insensitive” comment left women on reproductive journeys burning like crazy.
“You don’t ask a couple when they’re having babies,” TikToker @KayPags3 scolded in a video reprimand, adding that Lachey’s incessant questions “didn’t sit well with her”.
“You have no idea if one of those couples is struggling with infertility… You don’t know if maybe they’ve been trying and have been unsuccessful,” she said.
“There are so many layers to unpack when it comes to fertility, it’s such a touchy subject,” she continued. “I can speak from experience and say that if I was on that show, and if I was interrogated with those questions, I would have burst into tears.”
Egg donor Megan Carney, of Santa Monica, California, agreed, weighing in on her own TikTok profile with a professional bent on Lachey’s reckless insistence.
“It’s so incredibly painful and inappropriate to ask women, couples, single people when they’re going to have babies,” Carney said.
“Especially if they’ve had problems. It’s like kicking yourself when you’re down,” she continued. “Please don’t ask anyone when the babies will arrive.
“They will come when they come, if you want them to come.”
Lachey has yet to publicly respond to the social media backlash.
However, on Sunday, after the reunion broadcast, she uploaded a photo of herself and the cast to Instagram, writing an appeal for sensitivity in the caption.
“Keep in mind online (and in life) that ‘words carry weight,’” he wrote, in part.
“What you say to someone you don’t know (and you don’t know the whole story) can have a lasting effect on them,” Lachey said in closing, “in many different ways.”
