NEED TO KNOW
- In July 2025, Hayley and Derek Hough announced that they were expecting their first child
- The couple previously suffered a miscarriage in 2024
- Everley Capri Hough was born on Dec. 29, 2025
Hayley and Derek Hough fell head over heels for their daughter, Everley Capri.
“Every step of our lives has led us to you,” the Dancing with the Stars pros captioned a January 2026 Instagram post featuring a sweet, black-and-white image of their newborn’s tiny feet enveloped in their hands. “Our hearts have been cracked wide open and our world is forever changed.”
Everley’s December 2025 birth marked a new chapter for the couple, who were coming off a “traumatizing” past three winters. A year after being seriously injured in a car accident in 2022, Hayley almost lost her life when a blood vessel burst, causing a brain bleed. About 40% of her skull was removed to relieve the pressure, and she had to receive a skull implant.
Then, in 2024, she miscarried.
“She’s been through so much,” Derek told PEOPLE in January 2026, just a few weeks after Everley was born. “To see her go from where she was to now, giving birth, is amazing. My daughter has a great example here.”
“We’ve had so many moments in life that are not as great,” Hayley added. “So she’s our rainbow after the storm.”
Here’s everything to know about Hayley and Derek Hough’s baby, including what they’ve said about parenting so far.
Hayley and Derek announced they were expecting a baby in July 2025
The couple shared that they were expecting their first child in a July 2025 Instagram video. The heartfelt clip showed Derek and Hayley embracing while she slipped a strip of sonogram photos over his shoulder.
“We can’t believe the biggest thing to happen to us could be so small ♥️,” they captioned the video.
In a September 2025 interview with PEOPLE, Derek said he’s looking forward to experiencing all the firsts that come with parenthood, sharing that becoming a dad has already reshaped his priorities.
“Being present is, for me, the most important thing,” the Extra host said. “So yes, I’m busy … But being present with my wife, during this time, and then, now, being a father in a couple months, that’s my number one, always.”
They opened up about previously having a miscarriage
In honor of Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month in October, Derek and Hayley shared the “silent heartbreak” they had experienced in 2024.
“There are some things in life that change you forever. For us, this is one of those things,” the couple captioned a joint Instagram video in October 2025 that featured clips from Hayley’s first pregnancy. “We share this part of our story to honor our baby that never made it earthside.”
After experiencing a miscarriage, the couple chose to be more private when Hayley was pregnant with Everley. Hayley told PEOPLE that they waited until almost 20 weeks to share the news publicly.
“I didn’t have a whole lot of symptoms in the beginning, I was feeling so good, so I got really scared that something happened,” she said. “It really freaked us out. When we were on our adventures, we tried to live life to the fullest because we knew it’d be the last year of just the two of us. But when we’d get home, we’d do a scan just to make sure everything was still okay.”
They kept her sex a secret during Hayley’s pregnancy
Part of that privacy was deciding to keep the sex of their baby a secret from the public until after the birth. “You know, there’s not a lot of surprises in life, right?” Derek said during a September 2025 appearance on Live with Kelly and Mark. “We’re going to keep that one to ourselves.”
But the DWTS judge said they couldn’t keep that secret from themselves as his wife is “Type A.”
“She’s like, ‘That closet is ready to go, the clothes are ready,’ ” Hough explained to hosts Mark Conseulos and Kelly Ripa. “She wants to know what’s going on.”
Everley was born in December 2025
The couple welcomed their daughter on Dec. 29, 2025, in a home birth that Hayley described as “so special.”
“We had candles everywhere, beautiful music playing,” Derek added in their January 2026 interview with PEOPLE. “To be in the room during Hayley’s labor, holding her … She just became power. I was in awe the whole time. I was like, ‘Damn. Y’all women are badasses.’ ”
The couple planned to deliver their daughter at home, even though that meant no epidural or pain management. Still, Hayley told PEOPLE she wouldn’t change a thing.
“It was very unique,” she said. “Did I ever expect it to be the way that it was? Absolutely not, but it was so empowering and beautiful, and it’s how our beautiful baby girl came into this world. I would not change a single second of it. It was perfect in every way.”
Everley’s name has a special nod to her mother
Hayley had a list on her notes app of names she was toying with for her daughter, but Everley was always at the top with a little star by it.
However, when their daughter was born, Hayley and Derek took nearly a week to name her, deciding “to keep staring at her and see what name calls to us.”
They intentionally chose to spell Everley with the same last three letters as her mother’s name. A friend also encouraged them to look into the numerology behind her name, which came out to 11 — a special number for the couple.
“Whether you believe in that kind of stuff or not, it was cool,” Derek said. “When we looked at the meanings of it, it was like, ‘Okay, this is beautiful. We love this.’ It felt right. It just was a feeling.”
Hayley added that she would see the number “all over.”
“She was 11 days late, I’m born on Oct. 11,” she said. “It just called to us, and we were like, ‘This is right. This is it.’ ”
Since their daughter was the couple’s rainbow baby, Derek wanted to incorporate rain or bow into her middle name, but Hayley vetoed the idea. Instead, they settled on Capri, which Derek described as the “little spicy part of her.”
Derek said Hayley was a “natural mother”
If the first few weeks with Everley taught Derek anything, it’s that his wife was made for motherhood.
“There are so many times where I’m just quietly looking at her and tearing up,” he told PEOPLE. “I said this to my family: ‘Hayley was meant for this.’ She is such a natural mother.”
The Emmy Award-winning choreographer admitted that he was “afraid” to hold Everley at first because she was “so fragile and little and delicate.” But Hayley was there to reassure him, telling PEOPLE that they were “all figuring out this new life.”
They both hope Everley will be a dancer
Though she’s still young, the couple have already committed their daughter to dance classes.
“We’ll see if she’s a little dancer,” Hayley said. “We have friends whose kids love dance because their parents are dancers, and we have friends whose kids hate dance because their parents are dancers. So you never know.”
Either way, Derek said he wanted to enroll Everley in lessons because “dancing is such a great way to learn about your body and work on coordination, confidence, community.”
Read the full article here
