Welcoming her two-year-old son, York, wasn’t the easiest thing for Tyra Banks. In a new interview with People, the model opened up about her difficult IVF process before eventually turning to surrogacy to welcome her baby boy.

The 44-year-old said she tried “for a while” with her now ex-boyfriend, Erik Asla, to get pregnant. After not being able to conceive naturally, the couple then turned to in vitro fertilization, but suffered a year of failed attempts. “It was emotional,” Tyra confessed.

It was especially hard for Tyra’s mother, Carolyn London, to watch her daughter go through something so difficult. “It hurt me so much to watch her struggle through that. She set up a nursery and in the bathroom, she put a tile in the floor that said, ‘Mommy Already Loves You.’ And then she found out the IVF had failed,” London shared. “It ripped my heart out.”

Tyra and Erik then decided to turn to surrogacy, a process Tyra said was quite difficult. “There are so many stages,” she shared. “It’s like, ‘Okay, it’s a healthy embryo. Okay, it’s month one.’ I was just constantly living on edge until I held him for the first time.” She eventually welcomed York in January 2016.

Tyra’s mother revealed how thrilled she was when everything eventually worked out for her little girl. “I couldn’t believe it! I kept saying, ‘You have a baby!'” she gushed. And now, she’s loving watching Tyra be a mom. “The way she communicates with York blows me away. She’s amazing.”

Today, Tyra is very grateful for everything — especially life with her young son. “Everything that happened all got me to this,” the America’s Next Top Model host said. “It was meant to be.” But that doesn’t mean she wants to expand her family anytime soon. When asked about having baby No. 2 she replied, “We shall see!”