Survivor and AFLW star Moana Hope reveals she and wife Isabella Carlstrom are preparing for baby number two

Survivor star and former AFLW player Moana Hope and her model wife Isabelle Carlstrom are already proud parents of one-year-old daughter Svea Hope, but the couple’s brood is about to get bigger!

Speaking on The Ash London Podcast this week, the couple revealed that they are preparing to get pregnant with their second child.

Isabella delivered Svea via IVF in November last year, but this time around, Moana plans to carry their second baby and confessed that she is “so excited to now know how it feels” to be pregnant.

“My family’s very fertile so I’m hoping I’ve also got that gene. But I’m excited to go for it,” the 33-year-old said.

“And this is my opinion, if you want to and you have the option and you want to be a mum, going through that pregnancy stage is one of the greatest gifts of life. You’re literally growing a human in your stomach.”

Moana, who played for Collingwood and North Melbourne before her two Survivor stints, said she and Isabella have worked hard to make sure they’re financially prepared for another baby.

“Trying to get pregnant, and the pregnancy – nothing can prepare you for that. Especially trying to get pregnant, we had a couple tries before we got pregnant and were unsuccessful,” she said.

Despite the couple’s undeniable love for each other, Moana and Isabella couldn’t have grown up in more different worlds.

Moana was raised by a hard-working mum alongside 14 siblings in Melbourne’s housing commissions, while Isabella and her brother grew up across town in leafy Toorak.

The AFL legend said growing up with so many siblings was what made her determined to become a mother herself one day.

“I’m glad I’m gay because I probably would have ended up with 12 kids, that’s how much I wanted kids,” she said.

“I’ve wanted to be a mum forever, I can’t remember the day I didn’t want to be a mum.”

Moana also opened up on the challenges her mother faced while taking care of not only her own children but also her grandkids.

“My mum is a walking angel. [She] had 19 kids living under her roof that she cared for. 19 kids. Think about that,” she said.

“And they weren’t all her kids. A quarter are her kids and the rest were my sisters’ kids. Mum had to adopt them all. So she had 19 kids that she cared for and she worked full time and she put food on the table for us.

“I remember she never had a cent to her name, every pay check bought all the food, and then she would do that over and over. So my mum is unbelievable.”

In March this year, Moana told Woman’s Day that she wants a “household full of babies”.

“But we’re aiming for three at the moment,” she said.

The couple tied the knot in November 2019, and Moana departed for Survivor just days later.

Not long after returning home, the newlyweds began their journey to starting a family. In May 2020, the happy couple took to Instagram to announce they were expecting their first child.