LOS ANGELES – "Real Housewife" type shows are usually all about fame, fighting and fawning over one another. But "Nashville Wives" star Cassie Chapman is determined to use her show as a platform to send a message that hits close to home.
“At first we didn’t want kids, we just wanted to travel the world,” Chapman, who is married to Christian singer-songwriter Gary Chapman, told FOX411. “But I soon found myself looking at Facebook and I started getting upset seeing all my friends pregnant and having babies… So Gary and I sat down and talked about it.”
Twenty-three years her senior, Gary Chapman already had three children with his former wife, fellow Christian singer Amy Grant, all now well into their twenties. Cassie said he had also had a vasectomy, a procedure he then got reversed when the newlyweds agreed to expand their brood. But after failing to get pregnant for over a year, the couple began exploring the possibility of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
“One day I suddenly got a call from a friend telling me of someone she knew that was four months pregnant and was looking for an adoption family, but didn’t want to go through an agency,” Cassie continued. “It was like God knew what we needed… So we went with a private adoption, and we have a very open adoption in which the biological mom can visit whenever she wants.”
Their newborn daughter, Eva Chapman, made her first appearance on "Nashville Wives" last week, and the couple are using the show to advocate their support for open adoption.
“There are many children, babies and older, in America that need an adoptive family and it doesn’t need to be such a hard procedure,” Cassie added. “While there are some great agencies out there, private adoption is a great way to go, too, and we want to spread that word.”
“Private Lives of Nashville Wives” airs on TNT on Mondays.
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