Gypsy Rose Blanchard pregnant shortly after being released from prison for plotting to kill abusive mother

Gypsy Rose Blanchard, who recruited her ex-boyfriend to kill her mother after years of being forced to pretend she was seriously ill, announced Tuesday that she is pregnant and hopes to give her son everything he lacked growing up.

Blanchard said in a YouTube video that the baby will be born in January, just over a year later she was released from a women’s prison northeast of Kansas City, Missouri.

“I just want to be a good mother to my son,” she said, her voice breaking. “I want to be everything my mother wasn’t.”

Blanchard’s case sparked national tabloid interest after news emerged that her mother, Clauddine “Dee Dee” Blanchard, who was murdered in 2015, had essentially held her daughter prisoner, forcing her to use a wheelchair. and a feeding tube.

Dee Dee Blanchard tricked doctors into performing unnecessary procedures by telling them that her daughter’s medical records were lost in Hurricane Katrina, Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s attorney said.

The lawyer said the mother had Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a psychological disorder in which parents or caregivers seek sympathy through their children’s exaggerated or invented illnesses.

The mother-daughter duo received charitable donations and even a home near Springfield, Missouri, from Habitat for Humanity.

When Gypsy Rose Blanchard turned 23, she provided her then-boyfriend with a knife and hid in the bathroom while he repeatedly stabbed her mother, according to the probable cause statement. Then Gypsy and Nicholas Godejohn, whom she met on a Christian dating website, rode a bus to Godejohn’s home in Wisconsin, where they were arrested.

Godejohn is serving a life sentence in Missouri. Prosecutors cut a deal with Blanchard because of the abuse she suffered. Ultimately, she I found a way to forgive her mother and herself, she said shortly after her release, while promoting the Lifetime documentary series, “The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard,” and her own e-book, “Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom.”

Previous coverage includes the 2017 HBO documentary “Mommy Dead and Dearest” and the 2019 Hulu miniseries “The Act.”

Blanchard said in the new video that she knows some people think she’s not ready to be a mother, that it’s too soon. But she was dismissive, saying no one is truly ready for parenthood.

“It’s an incredible feeling when your whole world changes and suddenly it’s not about you anymore,” she said. “It’s not about anything other than this little life that’s inside you that you’re now charged with protecting. And this little life is a baby, a little human being that is yours and that you have to make sure you protect, love and care for. And all the things I wish I had when I was little.”

She said the baby’s father is Ken Urker, a prison pen pal who proposed when Blanchard was incarcerated. They later separated and she married Ryan Scott Anderson, a special education teacher from Lake Charles, Louisiana. Shortly after her release from prison, however, Blanchard and Anderson split, and now she’s back with Urker. Blanchard said the pregnancy was unplanned, but she and Urker are excited and committed to raising a family together.

“I couldn’t be happier,” she said, while acknowledging that the relationship is unconventional. “Everything that has ever happened to me in my life suddenly doesn’t matter because everything has led me to who I am today and everything has led me to this moment here and now. And that is a blessing.”