Candiace Dillard ensured she was looking her best as she entered motherhood.
The “Real Housewives of Potomac” alum revealed she took a 10-minute break to apply some makeup before welcoming her son, Jett Marshall Lee, in the early hours of Oct. 3.
“My epidural had kicked in, I was 10 cm. dilated and my doctor comes and goes, ‘Okay, we’re ready for you to push,'” Dillard recalled during an interview with People published Friday.
“And I said, ‘Well… if we’re going to get started, I would like to put my makeup on because I need to give birth looking like something,” she continued.
The former Bravo star, 37, said she knew they were “going to be taking pictures right after” and she needed to “look right!”
“My son isn’t meeting me looking haggard like I just gave birth!” she joked. “And I can’t be putting on makeup with my baby in my hands.'”
“So yes, between contractions and pushes while I was in labor, I was doing my makeup,” she added with a laugh. “I have pictures of it, too.”
Dillard said her doula held up “a mirror and a ring light” as she focused on doing her glam — with the doctor’s approval, of course.
“I had pin curls in, so I was taking those out. And my doctor was so supportive. She was like, ‘Yes, let’s do it!'”
While her delivery team cheered her on, her husband, Chris Bassett, simply looked on in bewilderment.
“Oh, Chris was just sitting there looking at me like, ‘This chick is so bougie.’ He was just shaking his head,” Dillard teased. “But make no mistake, if I could have had glam in there, I would have! It had to be this way.”
However, Dillard said Bassett was super supportive once she was done and ready to push, “massaging [her] feet” and talking her through the process.
“I was terrified when it was time to push but after the first one, everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, his head is already out!'” she recalled. “And they brought my hands down so I could feel his head, and I started crying because it was like, ‘That’s my son!'”
She continued, “And then I pushed a second time and Chris was like, ‘He’s almost out!’ So again, they brought my hands down because I wanted to pull him out, and I pushed like, one more time he was there. I really was two and a half, three pushes. That’s it.”
The reality TV star described her first time holding her son as “magical” and a moment she will “never forget for the rest of [her] life.”
While Jett is the couple’s first child together, the restaurant owner 46, also has three children — Owen, 22, Mateo, 14, and Naia, 10 — from two previous relationships.
Dillard and Bassett wed in August 2018 after nearly three years of dating.
She announced her pregnancy in April — one month after announcing her departure from “RHOP.”
