Kelly Rutherford dishes on becoming a single mom during her pregnancy

For Gossip Girl star Kelly Rutherford, the news that she was expecting her second child came as a bittersweet surprise.

Already the mother of adorable 2 ½-year-old son Hermés Gustaf Daniel, Kelly was overjoyed at the idea of having another baby. But her volatile three-year marriage to the children’s father was already at the breaking point.

So when she was three months pregnant, Kelly, 40, made the heart-wrenching decision to leave her husband, Daniel Giersch, and have the baby on her own. Their daughter, Helena Grace, was born on June 8th in Los Angeles.

Now, for the first time since the controversial split, Kelly is speaking out. She recently sat down with Life & Style at her home to set the record straight on her life-changing choice, her bitter custody battle and her plans to raise her two children on her own.

Kelly says it didn’t take long for her to realize she and her husband, a German entrepreneur, weren’t the ideal match they seemed to be at first.

“I met this person, I fell in love with him and I wished for the best,” Kelly tells the magazine. “He was charming in the beginning.” But soon after the birth of their son in 2006, “it was pretty obvious we weren’t getting along.”

Still, for Hermés’ sake, she tried to make the relationship work.

“I just didn’t want [Hermés] to go through anything he didn’t have to,” Kelly says. “I stayed until I couldn’t stay any longer, even though I knew things were rough. I wanted to be sure. When you have a child with someone, I think you have to be able to look at them and say, ‘I did everything I could,’ before you realize it’s time to move on.”

The couple conceived Helena when they were trying to make things work. And when Kelly realized she was expecting again, she thought another baby might actually save her marriage.

“I found out I was pregnant, and I thought, Oh, maybe things will be nice, maybe it will be calm,” Kelly recalls. “But it wasn’t. Things only got more intense.”

For the sake of Hermés and her unborn daughter, Kelly finally got the strength to leave the marriage. When Helena entered the world, Kelly, her doctor, her midwife and her mom were the only people in the delivery room. “It was great,” Kelly says. “Very peaceful.”

As for her estranged hubby? “I didn’t want him in the room with me,” Kelly tells Life & Style. (Her doctor advised against it too.) “When you’re in labor, you don’t want the man you’re divorcing in there, especially someone who’s said cruel things about you. I was just trying to have a healthy baby through an enormous amount of stress.”

Still, Kelly notes, she didn’t prevent him from seeing his daughter: “She was born at 10 at night, and he saw her the next morning.”

Despite extremely tense relations with her ex, Kelly is flourishing in her new role as a single mom.

Nesting comfortably at home with her two young children, she says she’s at peace. “I’m so excited to have a little boy and a little girl,” Kelly says. “Since I was very young, I’d always wanted kids, so this is a dream come true!”

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