Melody Ehsani Reveals How She Told Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea She Was Pregnant At 42

When fashion designer Melody Ehsani welcomed her baby with husband Flea back in 2022, the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist was already a dad of two himself. He was 60 years old at the time, with children ranging from 17 to 34 years old, and Ehsani admitted in a new interview on The MOTHER Podcast that he made it clear he didn’t want any more children. So how did he react when she found out she was pregnant at 42 years old? In the most rock and roll way possible.

On the premiere episode of The MOTHER Podcast, available on June 6, the streetwear designer shared that she and Flea discussed the possibility of children before they got married. “I told him, I don’t know if I want to have kids, but I need it to be on the table, if I want it or if I don’t,” she told MOTHER Magazine editor-in-chief Katie Hintz-Zambrano. At first, she explained, Flea agreed. Until he went off on a backpacking trip. “He came back from his backpacking trip and was like, ‘I don’t want kids,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Are you serious, two weeks before we got married? Now you’re gonna tell me this huge thing that was potentially a dealbreaker for me.’”

Ehsani initially came to terms with this decision because she loved Flea and hadn’t been 100% sure about having children herself. Until she found out she was pregnant. “It kind of pulled the rug out from under me a little bit. And I was kind of scared to tell my husband a little bit because I was like, ‘Oh, he said he didn’t really want kids,’” Ehsani explained, going on to share that she showed him her sonogram photo. “And he’s like, ‘What’s this?’ And I was like, ‘What the fuck do you think it is?’ And he just looked at it. And I was like, ‘I’m pregnant.’”

Flea had a pretty hilarious reaction. “He just looked at it for a minute. He’s like ‘Well, it’s a good thing I smoked some weed today,’ which he rarely does.”

Since welcoming their little boy, Darius Booker Balzary, on Dec. 12, 2022, Flea has changed his outlook on having another baby. He told E! News in the weeks after his baby boy’s birth, “I haven’t been doing a lot of sleeping, but I’ve been doing a lot of floating on a cloud of love.”

As for Ehsani, she is thinking about her legacy. “I think I’m thinking more so about my legacy, because now there’s somebody to carry it forward,” she said on the podcast. “Now, there’s somebody that will inherit something. And I want it to be more lasting. I want it to be more meaningful.”

Ehsani’s episode of The MOTHER Podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts on Thursday, June 6.