B&B’s Karla Mosley (Maya) Opens Up About First-Time Motherhood
“Total joy” is how Karla Mosley describes her reaction to learning that she was pregnant. “I wanted to be a mom my whole life. As long as I’ve wanted to be an artist, I’ve wanted to be a mom. I grew up with such a wonderful mother, an aunt, and seeing my sister and my friends, I just felt grateful to have the opportunity.”
While the actress anticipated sharing the news with her family, there was one other person she had to inform — her partner, John Rogers, although, she recalls, “He actually kind of told me. I was like, ‘I’m feeling a little funny,’ and we were actually going to church that morning and after we walked out, he said, ‘We are.’ And I said, ‘We are what?’ I took a test two days later and he was right. He’s very intuitive.”
Mosley’s pregnancy was pretty smooth sailing, she happily reports. “If I can rate it, it was a 10. I really lucked out. I did have some nausea in the beginning, but the worst of it was being tired. I’m such an active person and I hated that I had to slow down. But it was a good thing. I needed to learn how to slow down, and it’s a lesson that I’m still learning today.” Mosley not only worked at B&B through her pregnancy but, “I was able to do a play, a very physical play, up until almost eight months of pregnancy,” she relays. “I traveled. I exercised. I also surrendered to my body in a way that I never have before. It was the first time in my life that I was gaining weight, and my body was like, ‘I’m gonna keep gaining weight, so get used to it! Just trust that it’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do.’ And I did.”
She welcomed her daughter at home — with a little help from her friends. “I felt really supported,” Mosley says. “My doula ended up being a good friend of mine from New York who just happened to be out here working on another client, so I got to have someone who I was very close with. And then my [two] midwives…. I actually chose them at 37 weeks, believe it or not. It was a very last-minute decision. John and I moved into our house at 37 weeks, so at that point we said, ‘Let’s just do it at home.’ John is very protective and he felt completely at ease with them, as well — and sometimes when it got too intense, he’d go out and get everybody food [laughs]. I also used something called HypnoBirthing, which is like self-hypnosis. During the birth I was like, ‘This isn’t working!’ But looking back, I think that it did. I got to five centimeters dilated without anyone there, and I thought I was doing fine, but finally John said, ‘I really think you should call your midwife.’ It was like mind over matter, so it really helped through the process.” There was another bonus to not going to the hospital, says Mosley. “You get to sleep in your bed that night. They clean everything up and you just go to sleep. That’s it!”
Rogers was very attentive to the new mother following the birth. “I didn’t walk for the first two weeks, which again, was very hard for me,” she shares. “My midwives were like, ‘We really want you to rest and just stay in bed.’ John would bring food up. In the middle of the night, I would wake up and there were snacks and water at the side of my bed. Everyone who visited was like, ‘It’s so clean downstairs!’ and I was like, ‘I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been down there in a week.’ ”
Once Mosley was up and around, she couldn’t wait to bring Aurora to the B&B set. “It’s funny because now, I’ll go into the studio and they all look at me like, ‘Why are you here without her?’ They absolutely love her. It’s such a beautiful family at BOLD, starting with Brad [Bell, executive producer/head writer]. He has been nothing but supportive from the very beginning. They threw me the most beautiful shower before she was born. They were so excited and gave me great tips about being a mom. It’s just been awesome to bring her to set. People have been so loving and willing to hold her when I was getting blocking and things like that. It’s a really great family.”
Mosley’s own family was especially comforted by Aurora’s birth, since they were still reeling from the loss of the actress’s niece, Lilia Sophia, who died on August 3, just weeks shy of her sixth birthday. Lilia was a heart transplant recipient, having been born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome — a congenital defect in which the left side of the heart does not form correctly. “When I first told them I was pregnant, they were really surprised, and then really excited,” Mosley recalls. “At that point, my niece was still alive and she was the most excited to have a cousin. The pregnancy became a real point of happiness for all of us.”
The sadness of losing Lilia was foremost on her mind as she prepared to bring Aurora into the world. “Because Lilia passed away two weeks before Aurora was born, I remember feeling like, ‘How am I going to pull myself together to have this baby?’ ” Mosley sighs. “At that point, I didn’t know she was going to be a week late, so I thought, ‘It could be any day. How am I going to be able to do this?’ And without me even saying anything, my sister, Alex, said, ‘Aurora’s coming to heal us.’ And I think that’s true. Aurora’s name means ‘the dawn’ but Lili was obsessed with the moon, so we think of them as the sun and the moon. For Christmas, my sister actually wrote a book that was about the meeting of Lili and Aurora, as Lili was ascending and Aurora was descending to Earth. It’s so beautiful. We’ve thought a lot about that. I’ve always shown Aurora videos of Lili, so she is very much a part of our lives.”
As Mosley looks forward to what the future will bring, she offers, “I will say that Aurora gives me hope. Looking at her, and seeing the purity and bliss in her eyes, and the way that she trusts people, I wish for more of that.”
Just The Facts
Birthday: August 27
Hails From: Westchester, NY
Sweet Child O’ Mine: Mosley and partner John Rogers welcomed daughter Aurora Imani
on August 17, 2018.
Mini-Mom or Daddy’s Girl? “This such a terrible thing to say, but I feel like she looks more like her dad when she’s serious and more like me when she’s laughing.”
Cover Up: Mosley worked during most of her pregnancy, noting, “There was lots of sitting behind desks, holding files; they’d sometimes raise the table or put binders on it in front of me. It was pretty funny.”
No. 2? Mosley says she thinks about having another child. “I have my sister and we’re so close and I’m so happy that I have her today. I think siblings are wonderful. I don’t know if I’ll have another child biologically, or adoption has always been something I have had in my brain space. We’ll see.”
Does Aurora Hang With Christian Saint-Victor, son of pal Lawrence (Carter)? “They have not had a playdate in person yet. Lawrence and I have been Skyping a lot because it’s not as easy for us to just go places. So, they have seen each other over the computer. I have met Christian, and Aurora has met Lawrence and [his wife] Shay, but they have yet to meet in person. We’ve been in talks to make that happen.”
Sleeping Beauty
Mosley says that at 9 months old, “Aurora loves music, which is very similar to me, too.” And the baby has already been to a Beyoncé and Jay-Z concert. “Yes, it’s so crazy,” grins Mom. “She was so wonderful. Actually, looking back, we were out of our minds! I cannot believe we did that. But it was such a spontaneous thing, and it was still in the stage where she was sleeping all the time. John went up the day of to see if there were tickets, and there still were. We piled in the car and said, ‘This will either be the best night or we’ll never speak of it again.’ But because she was so little and it was an outdoor space, we didn’t feel worried about germs and stuff like that. We got there late, we left early, and she just slept the whole time. We had her little headphones on. She just enjoyed swaying!”
