Dr. Wendy Osefo is opening up about why she was so upset that Real Housewives of Potomac co-star Ashley Darby brought her baby son on their cast trip during this week's episode of the Bravo hit reality series.
"I think that is often a big misconception for people. Yes, being a first-time mom is hard, but being a mom in general is super difficult," she told PEOPLE.
Osefo says it wasn't that she was necessarily personally upset with Darby for bringing her son — rather, she would have liked if she were "extended the same courtesy."
"I was just missing my baby," Osefo said. "If I had received the same invitation to bring my baby [on the trip] I definitely would have."
"Ashley and I, our babies are two weeks apart. Her son is actually older than my daughter. We were both exclusively breastfeeding, I'm still breastfeeding my baby and in order for me to have the ability to go on that trip for three days, I was up four days prior, around the clock, pumping so my baby would have enough milk for me to go away," Osefo explained. "I was coming from a place where I was simply saying, 'Wait, we all made sacrifices to be here and if I knew I didn't need to make that sacrifice and I could have just brought my baby, I would have done that.' I just wish I was extended the same courtesy."
Osefo explains that the girls trip was also her first time ever leaving her baby girl — and it was "heart-wrenching."
"It's so hard. The first scene you see me with Candiace, that was four weeks after I had Kamrynn. Then I did this show literally two months after having her. And for me, part of the reason that confrontation happened with Ashley and I is [because] that was my first time ever leaving my daughter," Osefo said. "There's fear that no one tells you lingers when you have a NICU baby. A lot of times the things that happen to them are at night, so it was heart-wrenching to leave her and then, to see another baby there, I was like: 'Oh my God, why didn't I bring her?' "
Wendy's daughter Kamrynn's was born prematurely. "Kamrynn was born at 34 weeks and because of the hospital where I had her, any baby born before 35 weeks is automatically put in the NICU," Osefo told PEOPLE. "No one goes into the hospital not expecting to leave the hospital with their baby and that was the position I was in. She came early and I thank God nothing was wrong with her, but we were in the hospital for nine days," the mother of three explains.
Osefo says she never left her baby's side "even after I was discharged."
"They said, 'Go home. Your baby stays here' and I said, 'No.' I forced them to find me a room in the hospital — it didn't have a bathroom or anything and I didn't need those amenities. It was like a closet with a bed, and I stayed there every single day because my baby was in that hospital. For anybody who has ever been in the NICU, it’s the worst experience. You hear machines going off, you see babies around your baby coding, you hear families crying. Again, I thank God that Kam was healthy and she was just born early, but there were families that had been there for months. The NICU experience is something that a lot of people don’t talk about. Everyone is waiting for your baby to come home and here you are in the hospital and it’s just so sad and heartbreaking."
Photo Credit: Bravo/NBCUniversal
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