Spelling It Like It Is

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Doing belly shots—kids kiss the baby not knowing if it’s a boy or a girl (soon-to-be Hattie).

(Courtesy of Dean McDermott)

Stella hugging her cousin Simone at the baby shower for baby Hattie.

(Courtesy of Bill Horn)

My gusband, Mehran, and I have a much-needed girlfriend day! Here we are watching our last movie before Hattie was born the next day.

(Courtesy of Tori Spelling)

Me in my DIY hospital gown with my three babes, currently unaware that one month from this photo I’d be preggers again!

(Courtesy of Dean McDermott)

To my complete family—

Dean, Jack, Liam, Stella, Hattie, and Finn

And . . .

Coco

Mitzi

Minnie

Ferris

Chiquita

Missy Snuggles

Phyllis

Maxine

Rosie

Princess

Sully

Benny

Cinnamon

Oreo

Trix

Hank

Totes

Juliet

Large Marge

Jackson

Phyllis Diller

Sugarplum

Ginger

Blueberry Fish

Raspberry Fish

Contents

Introduction: Living a Lie

The Test Is Conclusive

Reality Tweaks

On the Bright Side, Julia Roberts Knows I Exist

I’m the Stalker You Let in Your Front Door

The Pig Made Me Do It

It’s a
Boy
Girl

Fish Out of Water

Is There a Mall in This Seaside Resort?

Song and Dance

Martha Moments

To the Manor Born

Complications

The Glamorous Life

Reality Check

A True Renewal

Breaking News! Bigfoot Found!

Milestones

The Fourth Hole

VIP Fail

Baby Steps

I Am Tori Spelling

One Last Bad Thing

Tori’s Post-Baby Bikini Bod

Somewhere That’s Green

Conclusion: Biting the Bullet

Photographs

Acknowledgments

About Tori Spelling

INTRODUCTION:

Living a Lie

T
he cover of
Star
magazine said, “Tori’s Lies Exposed.” Ooh. What could it be this time? Was I cheating on my husband with someone who looked exactly like him? Had I been switched at birth with the true non-heir to the Spelling fortune?

But no. When I opened the magazine all I found was just a rehash of
Star
’s favorite story: Dean and I were breaking up. He was about to walk out on me. Blah, blah, blah. Heard it all before. It’s a story they’ve written so many times that I’m pretty sure their article list is on an annual cycle. If it’s March, Dean and I must be on the rocks.

Not to judge, but I can’t help feeling like the decent, moral, cream-of-the-crop journalists at
Star
magazine aren’t earning their keep. If you’re going to lie, lay it on us! Go big. Make up something good and juicy. Disclose that our chicken Coco is actually Paris Hilton’s stolen poodle in disguise. Or that Chelsea Handler has been right all these years: I am actually a man. (These are examples of creative lying,
Star
, and you can have them for free. Be my guest.)

There was no substance to the article. An insider was quoted as saying, “She always goes on and on about how strong their marriage is, but the truth is that it’s all totally fake—her marriage is a sham.” The article said that I’d kicked Dean out. He’d packed his bags. The accompanying photo on the front cover was of Dean carrying two shopping bags. One of them was from a children’s clothing store. If you looked closely, you could see where I’d been cropped out of the picture. A bit of my leg was next to his. I recognized our outfits and where we were. That was me and my husband, Christmas shopping for our children. Way to go,
Star
, you got us.

It’s funny (and annoying) to read that my love for Dean is a lie. My love for Dean is very real. Like everyone else we have our strengths and weaknesses, our ups and downs. That’s what real love is. I’m thick skinned, though. Must be all the scar tissue from the plastic surgeries
Star
thinks I’ve had. The stories don’t really get under my skin. But the story
Star
missed (surprise, surprise) is that I’ve lived my life in public on a reality show for six years, and with any public life come manipulations, exaggerations, and, well, realities behind the edited version of that life. I hate to give
Star
any attention for their feeble attempt at capturing my life. But my reality show,
Tori & Dean,
is over after six seasons on Oxygen. It’s a perfect time to go behind the scenes the way poor
Star
never could and fill in some of the missing pieces.

IT’S BEEN AN especially challenging couple of years. On
Tori & Dean
we moved houses constantly. At first, to me and Dean, my recurring need to move seemed driven by changes in our family. We needed more space because our stepson was moving back from Canada. Then we were having another baby. Then our house felt too big for us, and we wanted more land for our animals. And I wondered if I was subconsciously looking for another design project. Those were our reasons for moving, and that’s what we said on the show. But as my real estate obsession persists, it’s starting to look more compulsive. Moving is expensive, and I’ve put us in a precarious financial situation. I’m no stranger to that, but usually I drum up some work and correct our course. This time, when I should have been working, I was flat on my back in a hospital bed, and we dug ourselves deeper into the hole.

Tori & Dean
showed us fighting and then renewing our vows, but it didn’t tell the full story of Dean’s and my ups and downs. There’s a reality behind that reality. I want to share our hardest period, and the real moment I fell in love with my husband all over again.

People know that our fourth child, Finn, came right on the heels of our third, and the press showed cute pictures of my pregnancy bump and the “look how quickly she slimmed down” after-pictures. I talked in the press about my health issues surrounding the pregnancy, but nobody really knows the impact it had on me and my family.

Our family is complete now: me; Dean; our four beloved children; my stepson, Jack; and a somewhat changing menagerie of pets and farm animals. The show that tracked our family is over, but we go on changing (houses), growing (our suburban farm), and getting into unexpected scrapes (paparazzi-fleeing car accidents). I’m the first to admit that I haven’t figured things out yet. But at least I tell it like it is.

The Test Is Conclusive

T
he first sign that something wasn’t exactly normal happened in the middle of work craziness. On Thursday, February 10, 2011, in the middle of doing photo shoots for my about-to-be-published party-planning book,
celebraTORI
, my gay husband (whom I call my “gusband”) Mehran and I were scheduled to fly to Tampa. I had an appearance on the Home Shopping Network (HSN) to promote our jewelry line. I had started freaking out about the plane trip a week in advance. (That part was completely normal.)

Every guest who appears on HSN to sell their products agrees to do a middle-of-the-night segment—to pay your dues. Then you appear again on a prime-time block the following day. It’s a brutal schedule on a normal day—I’m sure Suzanne Somers and George Foreman didn’t relish hawking their goods in the dead of night—and my fear of flying compounded the stress, but as I was soon to find out, this wasn’t a normal day. Mehran and I left L.A. in the morning, transferred in Dallas, and arrived in Tampa around dinnertime. I went on the air at two in the morning. The next day, after meetings with HSN, I was back on the air from four to six
P.M
.