The Valley‘s Michelle Lally recalled red flags in her relationship with Jesse Lally — including him trying to stop her from having an epidural while giving birth to their daughter.
During the Monday, March 17, premiere of her “Pursuit of Sassiness” podcast, Michelle, 36, admitted she knew Jesse, 43, might not have been The One when they met.
“So Jesse and I were together for a long time and things were really good. There were obviously red flags, but when you’re young, you don’t really pay attention to them,” she said. “Or you brush them under the rug and you just think it’s going to be fine.”
Michelle said that “for the most part” their relationship was “good” until it wasn’t. She specifically detailed her giving birth to their daughter, Isabella, in 2020 as when things took a turn.
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“I arrived to the hospital and I said, ‘Give me that epidural immediately.’ And Jesse was very anti-everything. He wanted natural. But I’m four centimeters [dilated] and I [thought I was] going to die,” she shared on the podcast. “When I did do the epidural, I was stuck at seven centimeters for like a day.”
The labor only got worse from there when Michelle’s doctor realized she had high blood pressure, which required they do a C-section.
“Then Jesse starts arguing with the doctor, like, ‘No, she’s not going to have that.’ He wanted to help induce me,” she detailed. “They’re arguing and finally my doctor is like, ‘Do you want her to die? Or do you want to have a healthy baby? We’re doing this now. I’m overruling you.’ And [the doctor] did it and thank God that night I delivered Isabella.”
Bravo viewers were introduced to Michelle and Jesse’s tumultuous relationship when The Valley premiered in early 2024. Shortly before the show debuted, Us Weekly broke the news that Michelle and Jesse filed for divorce following their fifth wedding anniversary.
“Once I had a child, your life instantly changes as a mother. And that is when things slowly started changing. This is the part that my marriage became a nightmare,” Michelle continued on Monday. “It was a very lonely time for me. But my world at the time was my daughter and unfortunately, that wasn’t the same with Jesse. He continued his life as if he was still kind of a single guy. He really stopped communicating with me. He was gone all the time.”
Michelle defended her decision to initially remain in her marriage.
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“When you’re married, you don’t just walk away. It takes time,” she explained. “I wanted to be married to him for the rest of my life. That was my mindset and what I wanted as a goal of happiness. But he changed and not for the better.”
She continued: “I felt like I grew and he was just going backwards in life. I stayed as long as I did because the unknown is super scary. I had no idea how was I going to start all over in my 30s, now with a child and have to move out and possibly get a new work at a different place because we work at the same office.”
According to Michelle, filming The Valley caused her to realize she needed to end her marriage. “Now watching back the show, I see how miserable I was and how much I was actually going through mentally,” she admitted. “I tried to hide it and I’ve heard that I look like a robot and I think it’s because I was. I didn’t know how to handle it internally. … I could not at the time make the decision whether I was gonna stay or leave.”
Michelle has since found love with boyfriend Aaron Nosler while Jesse started dating girlfriend Lacy Nicole after their split.
