Why, for the last year, model Cheyenne Tozzi has kept her pregnancy and birth a secret.

Over the past year or so, Cheyenne Tozzi‘s fans and over 100,000 Instagram followers hadn’t heard much from the usually social media active 29-year-old model and singer.

The reason? Tozzi was pregnant with her first child.

While it’s a milestone many women share enthusiastically online, Tozzi did the opposite. There were no pregnancy updates on her feed, no baby bump pictures… nothing.

At the time, onlookers attributed her noticeable absence from public spheres to an understandable personal need for privacy. But apparently, there was more to it.

In a recent post-birth interview with Stellar Magazine, Tozzi revealed her pregnancy was not so smooth sailing.

See, the new mother had a rhesus negative blood type, meaning her blood type was incompatible with her baby’s.

The disease can cause a range of complications for not only mothers, but their babies, and so, Tozzi and her 26-year-old partner Marlon Teixeira decided to play it safe by keeping the pregnancy behind closed doors.

But Tozzi gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Dahlia de la Lune, about nine weeks ago, and is more content than ever.

 

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A post shared by Cheyenne (@cheyennetozzi) on Feb 6, 2018 at 2:30pm PST

“Dahlia is beautiful and healthy and strong, and getting fatter by the second. Marlon’s doing really well. She loves her dad very much. She always laughs at him,” she told the publication.

“It’s incredible. It’s a… trip, if I can say any word. It just throws you. It has been such an amazing learning curve for the two of us. Hats off to women who have five children!”

Prior to giving birth, Tozzi told Harper’s Bazaar she was anxious about becoming a mother for the first time, just as many mothers are.

“Of course I’m freaked out about parenting, but Tahyna (Tozzi’s sister) has a little girl who I know will be close to mine, and my family always has lots of love and humour and support,” she said.

“We’re strong women. I’ve got role models.”