The couple can't wait to make happy family memories in their new home in Napier. Photo / Richard Brimer and Caitlyn Jonasen
The couple can't wait to make happy family memories in their new home in Napier. Photo / Richard Brimer and Caitlyn Jonasen
As they prepare for a new arrival, Kiwi reality stars Quinn Ryan and Claudia Hoskins reveal their rocky road to starting a family.
Claudia Hoskins knows many people are sceptical of psychics, but seeing someone who could look into the future and tell her everything would be alright was something she clung to after a miscarriage.
What should have been the news she and her partner Quinn Ryan longed for – that she was pregnant despite a long battle with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) – became weeks of not knowing if the baby was even alive, before having to go through labour and a heartbreaking outcome.
So a psychic telling her the baby had a male energy and that she was going to have a little girl next gave her hope.
"She picked up that I'd had a miscarriage and said he was a boy who was healthy but wasn't ready, so he'd make way for somebody else to come first," Claudia tells Woman's Day.
The Hawke's Bay couple met two years ago after both appearing on reality dating shows. Claudia, 26, made Zac Franich's final three on The Bachelor NZ, while Quinn, 27, was in Lily McManus' top trio on The Bachelorette NZ.
A psychic told Claudia the baby will be a daddy's girl. Photo / Richard Brimer and Caitlyn Jonasen
Their connection was instant and Claudia moved from Auckland to Napier to be with Quinn a year later.
Laughing, Claudia recalls, "After our second date, I told my mum, 'I'm going to marry him.'"
A few months later, she asked Quinn about coming off her contraception, but having been diagnosed with PCOS a year earlier complicated things.
Claudia explains, "When I had my ultrasound, they said I had 20 to 25 cysts in each of my ovaries, so I didn't know even if I could get pregnant, but I knew that, one day, I wanted to have a family."
The pair agreed not to plan a pregnancy, but to "just see what happens" – and nothing did. However, as the months went by and Claudia's irregular periods continued, they realised they'd fallen in love with the idea of becoming parents.
Finally, on the recommendation of her nutritionist, Claudia saw a gynaecologist, who was about to prescribe medication to induce ovulation when a scan revealed she was already pregnant.
He told her, "It looks like you could be anywhere between seven to nine weeks, but at that point, you would usually see a heartbeat. At least it shows you can get pregnant."
Claudia says, "In hindsight, that's one of the worst things you can say to someone who's lost a baby. The first week, I just couldn't stop crying. I felt like my body had failed me. It was such a strange feeling – even though we hadn't seen this baby, in my head, I was pregnant."
Quinn confessed "it makes me feel even more in love with her" after seeing Claudia pregnant. Photo / Richard Brimer and Caitlyn Jonasen
The next month was a whirlwind of scans and blood tests, and the couple were initially told they didn't fit the medical diagnosis for miscarriage. Claudia recalls, "Ours was called a missed miscarriage, which is where the heartbeat stops and the foetal pole stops growing, but your body hasn't picked it up. I still got nauseous even though I had miscarried. I felt very emotional."
Claudia was induced and the baby they called Pea was born on 7 May 2021, almost a month after the initial scan,
Pragmatic about their loss, speedway racer and jetboater Quinn says, "It was upsetting for me to see Claudia upset, but I felt if it wasn't meant to be, we should move on."
However, he admits there were moments he struggled and felt off his game while racing.
The couple decided to start the ovulation medication a few months later and on her next two cycles, Claudia – a buyer for an online retail store – ovulated but didn't conceive. On her third cycle, tests indicated she wasn't ovulating at all.
"I was just gutted, like, why is my body doing this?" she remembers.
Then, just as the pair started contemplating IVF, Claudia realised her period was late. She'd been feeling nauseous and put it down to the summer heat, but now she rushed upstairs to use her last remaining pregnancy test.
"Straightaway it came up with two bright pink lines," she grins. "I started crying. I always pictured that I'd do this cute video of me finding out that I was pregnant, but I was hyperventilating into the camera. I can't show anyone the video!"
The nursery is fit for a little princess. Photo / Richard Brimer and Caitlyn Jonasen
Claudia broke the news to Quinn when he came home for lunch after a morning of jetboating. "I actually didn't believe her," he recalls. "I thought Claudia was showing me she'd ovulated again. Once I realised it was real, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I just picked her up and we held each for a while."
They saw the baby's heartbeat at a seven-week scan, but even then, the good news was shrouded in fear and concern. Claudia had experienced only a couple of weeks of morning sickness and health professionals told them to prepare for another miscarriage.
"Even now, I'm over 20 weeks and I still think something could happen," Claudia admits. "But then I think about that psychic who picked up that I was pregnant with a baby girl. She could see her at two or three years old, describing what she looked like and saying she was a real daddy's girl. That comforted me."
Quinn and Claudia, who is due in August, found out the sex of their baby at a party organised by Quinn's brother's partner Ally Janssen. Guests threw darts at a huge bunch of balloons, which popped to fill the room with pink confetti. When they saw they were having a girl, Quinn's face lit up.
"I'm quite happy to be getting a daughter, to be honest," he says. "I've been brought up around boys all my life – I have an older and a younger brother – so I feel like having a girl is going to bring out a different side to me."
However, having been at Claudia's side when their little Pea was born, Quinn is dreading seeing her go into labour again.
"I feel like it's going to be pretty rough for me to see my partner go through something and not be able to do anything about it," he confesses.
"As I've seen Claudia get a bit more of a tummy, I feel like we've gotten even closer, so it makes me feel even more in love with her and feel even more protective."
The couple can't wait to make happy family memories in their new home in Napier. Photo / Richard Brimer and Caitlyn Jonasen
To prepare for their daughter's arrival, they have moved to a new home in Napier. Claudia has already decorated the nursery with a fairy garden because she was "obsessed" with fairies as a child.
The couple hope that sharing their trials over the past two years with Woman's Day readers will give hope to others.
"When I went through that first miscarriage, I was googling to find other people's stories and their experiences," explains Claudia. "I just wanted to be able to talk to somebody who had gone through it. It would've made me feel so much better."
But putting up a poignant post about her PCOS and the miscarriage on her Instagram opened up a support network for Claudia. With a bright smile, she says, "Other people who were going through it shared their stories and told me that after a miscarriage, if you have a new baby, it's called a rainbow baby. So we're having a rainbow baby and we can't wait."
