Late last year, the 90 Day Fiance franchise surprised fans with new spinoffs starring fan-favorites.
One of those spinoffs stars Loren and Alexei Brovarnik, a pair of longtime stars who are very popular with the fandom.
In this clip of the premiere episode, things aren't entirely perfect in their household.
Alexei is going to be gone for 8 days, leaving a very pregnant Loren home with their 14-month-old baby.
It takes a village to raise a child, as the saying goes.
In this clip from the premiere (which airs Monday, Janaury 10), Loren is looking at looking after baby Shai without Alexei present for more than a week.
She's pregnant, and her objection isn't that he's attending a wedding in Israel -- but how long he'll be gone.
"He's leaving a pregnant woman and a 14-month-old," Loren's father points out.
Loren replies: "And I was okay with it until he said, 'I really want to take advantage of the weekend, so I'm gonna go three days earlier.'"
She laments that he made this decision "'without even being like 'Are you comfortable with... how does it make you feel?'"
"With this pregnancy I'm -- I don't want to say depressed, but I'm more isolated," Loren explains.
"And on top of everything, I have Tourette's syndrome," she reminds viewers.
"And anxiety triggers it," Loren notes. "Stress triggers it. Talking about it triggers it."
Loren recalls how, during her pregnancy with Shai, she struggled with her Tourette's a great deal.
Now, during her second pregnancy, she is experiencing that again.
This pregnancy is more difficult than her first, between the pandemic and caring for Shai.
Even so, she makes it clear that she understands why Alexei needs to attend this wedding in Israel.
"If he didn't go now, he wasn't gonna go for a really long time again," she tells her parents.
Defending her husband in the confessional, she adds: "When Alex came to America, I definitely felt guilty because he left everything for me."
"And I've always said, like, it's important for him to stay connected to where he came from," Loren affirms.
"'Cause if it was the other way around," she reasons, "I would want the same thing."
Her father worries that Alexei is making this decision when his first priority should be his family.
"I think it was a very selfish move on Alex's part to leave his wife and child," Loren's dad expresses.
"I understand he had to go to the wedding, I got it," he admits.
"But to extend it out just to have vacation," Loren's dad continues, "it wasn't work. It wasn't deployment. It was a choice."
Looking after a baby or a toddler by yourself is challenging under the best of circumstances.
Small children have a lot of energy, limited coordination, almost no impulse control, and very little life experience.
As a result, even the most well-behaved children can find themselves injured or in danger after just a few moments without supervision.
In Loren's case, we're talking about a difficult pregnancy -- both physically and emotionally -- added to her childcare duties.
It's true that Alexei is only leaving for a little over a week, and that his primary reason for traveling is for a wedding.
But considering the risks involved in travel and what that week will be like for Loren, one can understand her parents' concerns.
