HGTV Star Fakes Pregnancy Prank, Gets Ripped in the Comments

Heather Rae El Moussa came under fire after “pranking” husband Tarek El Moussa with a pregnancy stunt.

The HGTV star shared a video to Instagram on Tuesday that she titled, “Pranking my husband that I’m pregnant,” adding in the caption alongside a crying laughing emoji, “An unplanned prank…or was it?!”

In the video, Heather, 37, and Tarek, 43, could be seen playing a “guess the feminine product” game. But when she handed him a fertility tracker, things “took an interesting turn,” The Flipping El Moussas star wrote.

As Tarek looked at the tracker in the video, he noticed the word “fertility,” and began to ask Heather if she was pregnant. Heather encouraged him to fully open up the package, but ultimately she had to fully explain to Tarek what he was holding before he realized she was not, in fact, expecting.

“You can’t do that to me! Oh my god, my heart,” he told his wife as the two laughed at the misunderstanding.

Heather’s followers didn’t find the video quite as funny. “I love you guys…but this….I wish you wouldn’t prank about pregnancy,” wrote one person, as another agreed the video was “not funny” but “cringe.” A third person asked, “Why are we still using pregnancy as a prank?”

“Love you and your content, Heather, truly, but this kind of joke can really hurt people who are silently struggling,” a different commenter wrote, as another added, “I’m sorry. This isn’t it. Not a joke to lots of us out there struggling.”

Heather was quick to respond to some critical comments, writing that “this was unplanned from another piece of content we shot.” She continued, “The way the moment unfolded we thought it was funny given our very public opinions on another baby right now. It was to make light on our own situation and never to offend others.”

Soon after the negative comments began to pile up, Heather took down the video altogether.

Tarek and Heather share 2-year-old son Tristan, while the Flip or Flop alum shares son Brayden, 9, and daughter Taylor, 14, with ex Christina Haack.

Heather and Tarek previously revealed they were in therapy over their differing ideas when it comes to possibly welcoming another child into their family.

“[Tristan] is, like, the light of my life. It makes me so happy. I’m like, ‘How could I not want more?’” Heather said during a March episode of the Scrubbing In with Becca Tilley & Tanya Rad pocast. “But my husband is very much done.”

“So we’re very different on what we want for our future, which is hard,” she continued, explaining that while Tarek felt like he had been “raising babies” since he was in his 20s, she feels like her motherhood journey “just started.”

“I’m 37. I’m turning 38 this year. So, for me, it’s kind of like now or never in a way, not because you can’t have babies older, but I don’t want to be 40 having babies still because it’s a lot,” she said at the time. “It takes up a lot of your time, a lot of your life and the kids are my priority over myself. So, I want to do it, get my body back. And it took a long time. It’s hard.”