Lisa Vanderpump’s nephew Sam Vanderpump introduced that he and his fiancée, Alice Yaxley, predict their first baby — simply weeks earlier than revealing his end-stage liver illness prognosis.
“Life is stuffed with surprises, however that is the most effective one but,” Sam, 28, captioned the being pregnant announcement shared by way of Instagram on September 16. “I can’t put into phrases how glad and excited we’re!”
The submit included a photograph of Alice’s ultrasound scan surrounded by white roses aligned within the form of a coronary heart and the couple’s fingers beneath the scan, in addition to a snap of Sam kissing his fiancée’s pregnant stomach and holding up the scan for the digicam.
At some point earlier than the Instagram announcement, Sam and Alice, 24, opened up concerning the being pregnant to The Every day Mail.
“It was positively a shock. I had missed a interval, however I’ve polycystic ovaries, so it wasn’t a shock to have missed a interval,” Alice defined. “However I did a take a look at to be secure, and I wasn’t anticipating something, however it was optimistic. It was a giant shock. We checked out one another and thought, ‘Wow, that is massive,’ however all the pieces else in our lives was so proper. We knew we had been clearly going to be collectively and there’s by no means good timing, so we’re altering the plan round.”
Alice added that she thought she wouldn’t have the ability to have youngsters, so the being pregnant got here as a “reduction.”
In the meantime, Sam instructed the outlet that they’re having a child boy and have already got a reputation picked out: “Marmaduke.”
“My dad is not with us, however he all the time needed to name my brother ‘Duke’ as a result of he believed my brother would someday develop into Prime Minister, Duke Vanderpump,” Sam stated. (Sam is the son of Lisa’s older brother, Mark, who died by suicide in October 2018 at age 59.)
“I actually love the identify. My mum didn’t prefer it, so my brother was named Jack. My dad nonetheless had the final snicker by giving him the center identify Daniels. I believe Marmaduke is unbelievable, and we’ll name him Duke for brief,” he continued. “There’s an ideal Downton Abbey scene the place Maggie Smith and her daughter talk about a person named Marmaduke, which made us like it much more.”
Sam and Alice, who introduced their engagement in March after six months of relationship, instructed Lisa, 65, concerning the being pregnant throughout a current episode of Made in Chelsea.
“That is nice,” she instructed the couple. “I couldn’t be happier. I’m so glad for you.”
Through the Monday, October 27, episode of the U.Okay. actuality present, Sam revealed that he had been identified with end-stage liver illness.
“There isn’t any hope of my liver getting higher, and he stated, ‘I wouldn’t be having this name with you if I assumed you can make it via the following 4 or 5 years.’ They’re sending me for a liver transplant evaluation,” he stated throughout a dialog with costar Ollie Locke.
When Ollie, 38, requested how Sam was feeling now, he responded, “The way in which I take a look at it, I’m wholesome now. Hopefully I stay wholesome all the way in which up till someday [when] they’ll give me a name, and I’ll go in for a surgical procedure. After which I get up and I’ll be more healthy.”
Sam was beforehand hospitalized in December 2024 after he suffered from kidney and liver failure on account of a genetic situation. He was then identified with life-threatening sepsis.
“Though I had an underlying liver and kidney situation, it by no means affected my life. Medical doctors assured me I might reside usually and that it would by no means affect me,” he wrote by way of Instagram in January. “Whereas my situation performed a task in how sick I grew to become, the actually scary half was sepsis, which may occur to anybody. 1 in 5 deaths within the UK are linked to sepsis, and 11 million folks die from it globally every year. Many of those deaths could possibly be prevented if signs are acknowledged and handled rapidly. Sepsis is a race towards time, and I used to be dangerously near shedding that battle.”
