Sofia Grainge Shares Her Scary Postpartum Preeclampsia Experience

Sofia Richie Grainge is opening up about the harrowing postpartum complication that unexpectedly took her away from her newborn.

The model and daughter of musician Lionel Richie recently discussed her birth and postpartum experience with Dr. Thais Aliabadi and Mary Alice Haney on the SheMD podcast. Grainge shared that she had a “great pregnancy” until week 32, when she unexpectedly went into active labor. After a six-day hospital stay, she was discharged and placed on bed rest for six more weeks before being induced at 38 weeks.

“I gave birth and I was like, 'Wow, I really did that,’” Grainge said. “I did six weeks or however many weeks of contractions, and I have my beautiful daughter. I’m healthy. I’m safe. She’s healthy. She’s safe.” But Grainge quickly realized she wasn’t out of the woods just yet.

Only two days after coming home, she noticed alarming changes. “I blew up like a balloon,” she recalled. “Quite literally, just swelled. I felt very ill… So she [Dr. A] sent over her wonderful nurse, and my blood pressure was 165 over 103.” Dr. Aliabadi explained that Grainge was experiencing postpartum preeclampsia—a serious pregnancy complication marked by high blood pressure—requiring her immediate return to the hospital for treatment.

“The hardest thing I ever had to do, I think literally, was leave my daughter two days postpartum,” Grainge admitted. “It was horrendous. I actually hid in the closet and cried. And my poor husband was like, 'I have to get you to the hospital because the doctor is saying it’s just not safe. It’s not safe that you’re home,’” she added. “So I spent 24 hours in the hospital, and it was really, really, really hard.”

A magnesium drip quickly reduced her swelling, causing Grainge to lose 25 pounds of water weight in just 48 hours. While the preeclampsia risks were now behind her, the emotional toll lingered. “I don’t know why, from the second Eloise was born, I was like, 'I can’t miss an awake time. I can’t miss a moment. I don’t want someone else taking care of my kid.’” Now, three months after welcoming her baby girl, Grainge says she is “finally feeling like myself again” and is grateful for prioritizing her healing and bonding with Eloise in those early weeks.

Grainge announced the arrival of her baby girl with husband Elliot Grainge on May 24. “Eloise Samantha Grainge. 5•20•24 best day of my life,” she captioned a black-and-white photo of her newborn’s feet.

Shying away from out-of-the-box celebrity names, Sofia celebrates the classics with her daughter’s traditional moniker. Typically, a girl’s name of German origin, Eloise, means “famous warrior.” The mischievous literary character who lived at New York’s fabled Plaza Hotel and has seen a recent resurgence in popularity—to spot no. 212 among girls in the US—due to its appearance in the Netflix show Bridgerton.

Richie first shared the news that she was expecting in an exclusive interview with Vogue. “I found out very, very early,” Richie Grainge told the outlet. “I was about four weeks pregnant. I was on a trip to Milan for fashion week, and I was going to the Prada show. I was doing a really quick 24-hour turnaround, and I felt terrible but didn’t think much of it. I thought it was jet lag.”

Erring on the side of caution since she was a few days late and feeling subpar, Richie Grainge took a pregnancy test once she arrived home in Los Angeles. Richie Grainge, said her husband Elliot Grainge, was used to her taking tests regularly, as the couple had been trying since April. However, what she expected to be a run-of-the-mill negative looked a little different.

She promptly told Elliot to get in his car and go to CVS to pick up three more of the best pregnancy tests he could find. “He was so excited,” Richie Grainge recalls. “We spoke the whole way on the phone. And when he came home, he’s such a sweet guy he always wants to protect my emotions and expectations, so he kind of sat me down and said, ‘If these are negative, don’t be upset. Our moment will come.’ When we turned over all three tests at the same time they were all positive. He was so excited, and we both cried. It was crazy and overwhelming and so hard not to scream it from the rooftops. But knowing I was so early, I was so protective – even with my friends.”

After waiting for 8 weeks—Richie Grainge noted she wanted to “protect our mental health and space as a couple”—the two shared the news with their families. “We went to Elliot’s parents, who live about five minutes away from us, and I think I had a box – I want to say it was a Hermès box or some sort of box – and I told everyone that I had bought them a gift from Milan Fashion Week,” Richie Grainge remembers. “Everyone was like ‘Ooooh Hermes!’ But then they opened it and it had all three of the pregnancy tests [in it]. That’s how we told all of our parents. Watching their reaction go from like, ‘I’m about to get an expensive present’ to like ‘I’m about to get a grandchild’ was really sweet.”

Our congratulations to Richie Grainge on her new family of three!

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