As co-founder and executive chairwoman of Acquisition.com, the holding company she built with her husband, Alex, Hormozi says her decision to have a child came down to one realization: she could keep working, but her opportunity to have children was not unlimited.
“Fairly simple. I can work the rest of my life; however, I cannot have kids the rest of my life, at least not in the way that I wish to do it,” she says. “Once that realization was real to me, it made the decision obvious.”
The moment it became real
Hormozi found out she was pregnant in the guest bathroom of one of her spare bedrooms. Her first reaction was complete shock. After a year of health challenges, she’d spent only five months working toward getting her body to a point where she thought pregnancy might be possible. She wasn’t trying when she took the test.
“I remember being in just utter disbelief and shaking, like I couldn’t believe this was possible,” she says.
Then came fear. “It’s something I wanted so badly, and I was just so scared of what was to happen next, given it was so early,” she says. She was around five weeks pregnant, and it took another two weeks for the news to feel real. In the meantime, she took a pregnancy test every day.
There was no carefully staged reveal. “I wish it had been one of those romantic Instagram short videos where I surprise him with the pregnancy stick, but instead I was screaming when I took the test,” she says.
Alex came running. “He ran in, telling me that he thought somebody was murdering me, only for me to hand him the positive test.”
His reaction was surprise and delight. “He was so happy he hugged me and said, ‘This is amazing, wow,’ and kept telling me how happy he was,” she says. “It was exactly the reaction I needed, especially because I was completely shocked.”
The first trimester wasn’t magical
“You expect that things are going to be magical, but they were anything but that,” Hormozi says of her first trimester. The nausea, physical changes, and emotions made it difficult to maintain the routine she was used to. Some days she could work a full day; on others, she had to leave by midafternoon and lie on the couch because she felt so sick she couldn’t concentrate.
“I honestly feel like for those first three months, I didn’t have a brain,” she says.
She tried to keep up with water, walking, and work, but what that looked like changed from day to day. She also had to let go of some habits. Before pregnancy, she regularly fasted for 14 to 18 hours. Now, eating frequently enough to maintain her blood sugar and staying hydrated are non-negotiable.
“My body and health come first right now, so if at any point I feel like I’m pushing myself too much, I will just reel things back,” she says.
The smaller things nobody mentions
Hormozi admits she underestimated how many symptoms pregnancy could bring. One of the most unexpected has been frequent tingling and numbness in her hands, feet, legs, and arms, which she learned is linked to increased blood flow. “The first few times it kept happening to me, it really freaked me out,” she says.
Her cravings, in her words, have been “pretty not sexy.” The thing she looks forward to every day is toast with avocado, tomato, and salt, along with eggs. The smell of meat has been harder, and she hasn’t been able to eat much red meat.
Most of her routine has stayed intact, just scaled back. Her workouts, which used to run about 90 minutes, are now closer to 45. She goes out less in the evenings because she gets tired earlier, though she still tries to make plans once a week with Alex or friends. Rest looks like lying on the couch without her phone, watching The Summer I Turned Pretty or Off Campus, or lying by the pool in the sun while Alex swims.
A different kind of connection
Hormozi is candid that fear has been a constant companion. “The fears I’ve had have been endless and constantly changing, so it feels like a trick question,” she says. Early on, she worried the pregnancy wouldn’t continue; later, she worried about her symptoms and about developing a serious condition.
“I’ve definitely had a decent amount of health anxiety through this pregnancy, only because I did not go into the pregnancy in the tip-top shape of health that I thought I would be,” she says.
For all the difficult parts, one of the biggest surprises has been how connected she already feels to her baby. Feeling him move and kick, learning his rhythms, and seeing Alex’s face when he feels a kick himself have become some of her favorite parts of pregnancy.
“It’s such a crazy feeling to love somebody so much that you’ve never met yet, and that you would do anything for them without hesitation,” she says.
That connection has also shaped what wellness looks like for her right now. Beyond hydration and eating regularly, spending time with her husband has become central to her physical and mental well-being. They talk about how they might handle life after the baby arrives and make time to feel close before their family changes.
She isn’t interested in proving anything
Hormozi knows that women in business can feel pressure to choose between being taken seriously professionally and being visibly pregnant or becoming a mother. But she says other people’s opinions aren’t driving her decisions.
“I’ve done a lot of work on myself to not care what other people think of me,” she says. “Part of being in the spotlight is accepting that you will constantly be misunderstood.”
She has been mocked throughout her career and on social media, she explains, and expects that to continue as her life changes. If someone believes she must be either a mother or a businesswoman, she is comfortable letting them think that.
“I refuse to waste my life trying to change other people’s minds,” she says.
She is also honest about what she doesn’t know. Asked for her most direct advice to ambitious women about this transition, she laughs it off: “You shouldn’t listen to somebody who hasn’t had a kid yet. I don’t give people advice on anything I’m not an expert on.”
What she can say is that doing multiple things at once requires accepting trade-offs. “There are only 24 hours in a day; you don’t suddenly get more when you add something else to your plate,” she says. She believes many women become stuck trying to live up to an ideal version of motherhood or professional success when their actual circumstances don’t allow for it.
“The fear of being an imperfect woman is what keeps so many women stuck nowadays,” she says.
Leaving room for what comes next
Hormozi isn’t trying to map out exactly what kind of mother she’ll be before her son arrives. “I have no idea what it’s going to be like once my baby is here,” she says. “I prefer to leave all doors open and close none.”
She and Alex have built companies together, and she expects raising a family will also require them to work together, even when they don’t see eye to eye. But she keeps their private life private. “Our marriage is sacred to me,” she says. “I’m very much looking forward to having a family together and think it will be even better than I can already imagine.”
They have thought about names, though she’s keeping their choice private until the baby arrives in case they change their minds. For now, she says they would like all of their children to have Persian names.
There is still plenty she can’t know before becoming a mother, and Hormozi seems comfortable leaving that part open. But asked what kind of mother she hopes to be, her answer needs only six words:
“Kind heart, strong will, sharp mind.”
Follow Leila Hormozi on Instagram at @leilahormozi.
- Writer
- Fahima Degia
