Dancing With the Stars pro Peta Murgatroyd has a feeling her family is complete.
Although her husband, fellow DWTS pro Maksim Chmerokovskiy, told Us Weekly he would love to be a “girl dad” one day, Murgatroyd, 38, said she “would feel guilty” if she welcomed another baby into their world, which includes sons Shai, 8, Rio, nearly 2, and Milan, 11 months.
“I think it’s fair to say [I’m done], yeah,” Murgatroyd told Us Weekly while promoting her self-tanning line Peta Jane Beauty. “I think my body, just doing the back-to-back with the two babies, it was a lot — not just physically, but mentally.”
Murgatroyd has been open about her struggles with infertility after welcoming Shai in 2017, revealing in 2022 that she suffered three miscarriages over two years. After IVF treatments, they welcomed Rio in June 2023 and then surprisingly got pregnant four months later. They welcomed Milan in July 2024.
“I want to be able to give my all to my children and I feel like, right now, I’m struggling to do that with three,” Murgatroyd shared. “I don’t know how to cut myself into three pieces and give it all to them like I did for Shai for six years. He was by himself with us and he got everything of us, and I almost feel guilty that now I’ve got two younger ones and I need to split my time with everybody and they’re not getting what I gave Shai. You know, it’s just physically impossible. It just cannot happen that way. Shai was an only child for six years, so he got a lot of us and if I had one more, I would feel guilty that I’m just not being a good enough mom to them all.”
Murgatroyd added that her youngest sons “want to be held” all the time and need her undivided attention at this stage — so, she definitely feels outnumbered.
“And now Rio, my middle child, only wants me to hold him,” she added. “If I’m in the room, it’s only me. So we’re trying to just slowly massage this out of him a little bit [because] I have to go to work, I have to drop Shai at school. Like today, he’s crying in the morning because I have to leave to drop Shai to school. It’s just, it’s how it is. I can’t be everywhere at once.”
The pro dancer, who told Us she’d love to return to DWTS next season if she’s asked back, also admitted that Shai definitely noticed a shift in her and Chmerkovskiy’s availability after they expanded their brood.
“He’s a really sensitive child so he definitely feels everything and does feel, I don’t want to say the loss of me, but having me solely on him for six years. I think that he did really feel that, especially when Milan was born. Having three and having to adjust to a 1-year-old and then a fresh newborn baby that I was up all night with, as well. It was really tough on him in the beginning, and now it’s much easier. I think now he definitely understands more,” Muragtroyd explained.
“Like, last night, he was saying to me, ‘OK Mommy, you know, can you watch this movie with me?’ And I said, ‘Yes, but you know, I have to go up, put Rio to sleep, then give Milan the bottle, put him to bed and then I’m all yours.’ I tell him everything. I’m not going to hide it or sugar coat it. I say what I have to do as a parent, as a mom, because they are so young. I said to him, ‘You know, I did all of this with you, baby, all of it. You just have to remember, I have two more now.’”
Although life as a working mom of three is chaotic at times, Murgatroyd remains grateful for her family, especially in light of all she went through to get pregnant again.
“When I think back to the pain, the angst, the anger of not being able to keep a baby,” she began, pausing before adding, “It’s funny, I could get pregnant very easily but I kept losing the babies and it was a tragic circumstance because I really thought that I was going to be having one child for the rest of my life and I had to be OK with that. And now that I do have three and it is utter chaos, Maks and I have to find time to be together and we’ve really had to sit down and say, ‘I miss you.’ [And], ‘I miss you too.’ Let’s really just connect and make sure that we’re seeing each other properly, communicating properly and making sure we’re really trying to carve out time for each other.’”
Murgatroyd’s former DWTS celebrity partner Nick Viall recently shared how she helped him and his wife, Natalie Joy, cope with their recent pregnancy losses — explaining on his podcast “The Viall Files” last month that they randomly bumped into her at a CVS while Joy was “actively miscarrying.”
“I really didn’t know what to say to Natalie in that moment,” Viall explained as Murgatroyd and Chmerkovskiy, 45, were guests on the episode. “But Peta came out to the parking lot to console Natalie and shared some really sentimental things and, honestly, it was a huge help to both of us.”
“It was such a serendipitous moment,” Murgatroyd told Us about the encounter. “In those moments of loss, nothing anybody could really say to me was helpful. You just feel so alone. You just want it to happen again. You just want to be pregnant again. And when they say, ‘Wait, it’s OK, you’ve got time.’ It even made me more anxious, more annoyed, more ‘I haven’t got time.’ So I just sat there with her and held her hand and just said, ‘Look, nothing I can really say is going to make it better, but just know that you will be pregnant again. You will be, I don’t know when but you need to just keep the faith and keep believing that you’ll be pregnant and it will happen.’ And that’s it. Obviously, we talked through other things but I’m not going to say to her, don’t cry and all this stuff. I was like, ‘No, cry as much as you want. Sit in bed as much as you want. Just let it all out and just do whatever you need to do.’”
She continued, “I had people saying, ‘Come on, it’s OK. Get up. Don’t be in bed all day.’ And it was like, ‘No, let me grieve how I want to grieve. I am so upset right now.’ So it was a great moment and I’m just happy that I could have been there for her.”
In addition to motherhood, Murgatroyd is busy running her company Peta Jane Beauty, an award-winning self-tanning brand, and hopes to be back in the ballroom. Even though she knows it will be hard to teach a celebrity partner to dance and raise three young children at home, she also knows that a mother who feels fulfilled is a better parent all around.
“I’ve always been an advocate of that, ever since Shai was born,” she said. “Some people were like, ‘Why would you go back [to DWTS]? Why would you leave your son?’ And I’ve always been the person to be like, ‘Wait a second. I’m not going 12 hours a day. I’m going four or five hours a day and coming back as a better mom.’ Because I have had that outlet to be myself, to have the time away for a second, then come back and I am fully refreshed. I cannot wait to be there. I cannot wait to snuggle them, feed them, bathe them and do all the things [that come with] being a mother. I think that’s partially the reason why I never had [postpartum depression] is because I always went back to work after my first, after my second. And I think it helped. It helped me mentally, absolutely.”
