Olympic snowboarder Alex ‘Chumpy’ Pullin’s widow is pregnant after IVF success
Olympic snowboarder Alex ‘Chumpy’ Pullin’s widow Ellidy Vlug has shared the heartwarming news that she’s having a baby, but it’s not something she’d ever imagined doing on her own.
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Olympic snowboarder Alex ‘Chumpy’ Pullin’s widow has revealed she’s pregnant with his child, almost a year after his tragic death in a freak Gold Coast diving accident.
Ellidy Vlug took to Instagram Sunday to reveal the heartwarming news.
“Bubba Chump coming this October,” she told her 53,000 followers including surfing champ Mick Fanning, beneath an ethereal photo of her with a bulging belly.
“Your Dad and I have been dreaming of this for years little one.
“With a heart-wrenching plot twist in the middle, I am honoured to finally welcome a piece of the phenomenon that is Chumpy back into this world!
“When my love had this accident, we all held held onto hope that I’d pregnant that month. We’d been trying for a baby.
“IVF was on our cards but it wasn’t something I ever imagined I’d be tackling on our own.
“Bittersweet like none other, I’ve never been more certain or excited about anything in my life.”
The news comes after Vlug broke down in a recently podcast she made with good friend Chloe Fisher as she revealed the ongoing heartache of losing Pullin, 32, last July.
The triple Olympian and two-time world champion drowned after suffering a shallow water blackout while free diving on the Palm Beach reef near the southern Gold Coast home he shared with Vlug and their kelpie/border collie cross, Rumi.
In the podcast, ‘Darling, Shine!’, Vlug broke down as she told how Pullin’s death still felt ‘surreal’ and she felt ‘like a robot’.
“I miss him, I want him back,” she tells the ‘Darling, Shine!’ podcast she made with best mate Chloe Fisher, wife of international DJ Paul Fisher.
“I just can’t believe he’s not about to walk in the door any day. I go to text him, I go to call him still. I f---’n just wish he would come back. And I still can’t believe he can’t.”
Pullin, 32, drowned after suffering a suspected shallow water blackout while free-diving at Palm Beach artificial reef, near the southern Gold Coast home he and Vlug shared with their dog Rumi, on July 8 last year.
Vlug was walking Rumi on the beach when the triple Olympian and two-time world snowboarding champion – who was also a keen diver, surfer and talented musician – tragically died.
She tells the podcast (recorded using one of Pullin’s microphones) how she had “this really crazy feeling in my heart” on her walk, but put it down to the stress of a hectic weekend coming up.
“I was on this big walk and I felt this absolute heartache in my chest and I thought I was having an anxiety attack,” she says.
“It was just a feeling I’ve never felt before. That day I got home from that walk and it kind of all eventuated Chump had literally passed away ... I just don’t even know how to even say that word.
“I’ve just turned 29 and I’m just kind of navigating life alone with my dog in our house that we kind of dreamed of together and built together.
“It’s come up to the one-year mark which is so crazy and surreal. It literally feels like yesterday.
“People are always looking at me going ‘how are you so strong? You’re amazing, you get up every day and you do everything’ and I’m like: ‘I truly just feel like a robot’.
“Coming up to the year mark, I’m like waiting for the shock to wear off and it to get a bit more real, and it definitely has started to do that. Everyone says that the year mark and after that is where it gets kind of worse.
I kind of just love the robot stage because most of the time, I’m just like literally on autopilot and just don’t even know what’s going on.”
Vlug says she and Pullin were ‘living the dream’ after moving from Sydney to the Gold Coast, pinching themselves at how lucky they were.
She also revealed they were trying for a baby.
“We were all literally just the most frothing people on the planet,” she tells Chloe Fisher in the podcast.
“I literally don’t know how many times a day Chump and I would look at each other and be like ‘f--k, is this the best? I am so happy right now’.”
“(We were) living the dream, trying for our baby and everything.”
That was until that fateful July morning when, she says, ‘s--t went very far south’
She recalls that on the day of the tragedy, she and Pullin had a sleep-in and woke to “such a stunning morning”.
“Chump looked out the window and it was such a beautiful day and he was like, ‘do I go surfing or do I go diving? I was like ‘f--k I don’t know, do what you want to do, it looks amazing, just get out there’.
“I went for this big, long walk. Chump just literally didn’t come back that day.”
“I kept thinking he’s probably just gotten bitten by a shark. He’s missing an arm or a hand and he’s probably just in hospital and he’ll be back soon. I just had no idea. I still f---’n’ don’t know what’s going on.”
As the first anniversary of Pullin’s death looms large, Vlug says she feels more angry than sad, thinking: “Why him? Why me? Why?
“Everything does not happen for a reason and there’s no reason that s..t happens to people. It’s absolutely just not fair.
“Apparently he’s in a higher place, serving a purpose up there, doing bigger and better things … apparently. But selfishly I just want him here.”
Vlug says she wants to help other widows deal with their grief.
“There’s so many widows out there, I’ve got so many widows online that I talk to,” she says.
“And I want to talk to that, and make them feel heard. I just want to make them feel that they are not alone with a profound loss like this
“Personally, I feel that I haven’t even hit the sadness for myself yet,
“I just feel like a deep sadness for Chumpy and what he’s missing out on, what he was going to accomplish; because he was such a talented person that had so much ahead of him.
“I just feel like I don’t know what the f..k I was going to do with my life but he knew what he was going to do. He had so much to offer the world.
“And he was only 32. Like, he had nearly 70 more years of s..t to do. He was such a role model and helped so many people.
“He was the biggest legend in this entire world. If you met him, you were honestly touched by a f … n angel’s son. You should count your lucky stars.
“He was annoyingly good at everything, it used to piss me right off. I’d be like, ‘nah, something’s seriously wrong with you. Why are you so smart, why are you so good at everything?
“Turns out he was just an absolute mad dog at everything he did and I was just jealous because he made me look like a bloody muppet.”
Vlug says it makes her happy when friends and family come over to the house and remark how they feel Chumpy’s presence.
“I think that’s why I think he’s here or coming here, because he’s f...g in my house, his aura is so there, I’m never leaving our house, it’s literally our dream, dream house,” she says.
“Little Chumparelli, we miss you so much. There’s just truly no words. But here I am, still standing.”
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Originally published as Olympic snowboarder Alex ‘Chumpy’ Pullin’s widow is pregnant after IVF success
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