Model Emily Ratajkowski Welcomes First Child With Husband

Model Emily Ratajkowski and husband Sebastian Bear-McClard have welcomed their first child together, she revealed on March 11, 2021. "Sylvester Apollo Bear has joined us earth side," Ratajkowski expressed on Instagram. "Sly arrived 3/8/21 on the most surreal, beautiful, and love-filled morning of my life." The accompanying photo shows the first-time mom tenderly staring down at her child.

Ratajkowski memorably announced her pregnancy in an essay about gender in October 2020. In the piece for Vogue, the Gone Girl actress spoke at length about gender expectations and how she and her husband planned on taking a "progressive" approach with how they raised their child.

Like so many parents, Ratajkowski found herself congratulated throughout her pregnancy and then asked the question: "Do you know what you want?" The couple, together, crafted the response of: "We won't know the gender until our child is 18 and that they'll let us know then."

For someone with a social media presence, Ratajkowski also touched on the targeted algorithm on Instagram she was served for parenting content, including a flurry of gender reveal parties. "In them, anxious couples stand a few feet apart, looking awkwardly at a large cake or a suspended balloon," she wrote. "I'm taken aback by the pressure these videos capture. Even though I can't see them, I can feel the presence of their audience—the family members and friends behind their iPhones—as the couple smiles nervously, bracing themselves before they strike. Watching them feels impolite, like I'm peering in on something intensely private."

For the model, her journey through pregnancy was described as "innately lonely," and "something a woman does by herself, insider her body, no matter what her circumstances may be."

"Despite having a loving partner and many female friends ready to share the gritty details of their pregnancies, I am ultimately alone with my body in this experience," Ratajkowski reflected last fall. "There is no one to feel it with me—the sharp muscular aches in my lower abdomen that come out of nowhere while I'm watching a movie or the painful heaviness of my breasts that now greets me first thing every morning. My husband has no physical symptoms in 'our' pregnancy, another reminder of how different a woman and man's experience of life can be."

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The couple are parents a little over three years after the couple eloped in February 2018. At the time, the model wrote on social media: "I got married today." Ratajkowski and Bear-McClard exchanged vows in a New York City courthouse wedding. For the casual occasion, the bride wore a yellow pantsuit, which was just as non-traditional as her double-stone engagement ring, featuring a pear-shape and emerald-cut sone.

Ratajkowski and her husband were friends first, long before their surprise elopement. "They were all in a friend group," a source told Us Weekly previously. "He wasn't a stranger."