Erin and Ben Napier are growing their family!
The couple, who already share daughter Helen, 3, learned the happy news in September while simultaneously filmingHome Townin Laurel, Mississippi, andtheir new show,Home Town Takeover, about 200 miles away in Wetumpka, Alabama.
Listen to more of PEOPLE’s exclusive interview with Erin and Ben Napier below onour daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.
“We were like, ‘Ooh, this is going to be tough, but we can do it,'” says Erin. “We don’t remember anything, but I’m glad somebody was filming all of it.”
Brooke Davis-Jefcoat
The couple also broke the news on Sunday night’s episode ofHome Town, which featured a double pregnancy reveal. Their clients were Ben’s brother Jessie and his wife Lauren, who are also expecting. In the exclusive clip below, Erin explains she’s due just three weeks before her sister-in-law. “Our family is growing all of a sudden,” she says.
“Last spring, I put away the changing table supplies because I no longer had an infant. I put it away in the guest room closet and then I cried because I thought how lonesome Helen must feel up there in her crib beside an empty room every night. A few weeks later, I watched my daddy and his brother standing at my grandmother’s graveside. Two men with many differences strengthened each other. Two men who knew her better than any of us ever could. Siblings do that, they know and remember and keep the stories of a family alive. And we wanted that for Helen,” she continued.
Ben and Erin,who were college sweetheartsbefore theymarried in 2008, weren’t sure if they’d be able to start a family due to a complicated, years-long health battle Erin had faced.
For a decade, starting when she was nineteen, the designer suffered from bouts of severe stomach pain that would leave her bedridden for days. She saw countless specialists before an emergency exploratory surgery in 2014 finally revealed the cause:she had a perforated appendix.
Her appendix had been bursting and healing repeatedly for years causing her organs to become wrapped in scar tissue and bound together. But even after doctors removed the tissue, she was told the damage done would make it unlikely she would be able to have children.
WATCH THIS: How Home Town’s Ben and Erin Napier Keep Family Their Number 1 Priority: ‘We Say No to A Lot’
“I was very sad. And not knowing is always the biggest hurdle for me to overcome. I like to have proof. And we had no proof that I would be able to have kids,” she told PEOPLE in 2018.
Amazingly, the Napiers were surprised to find out that they were expecting three years later — on Mother’s Day 2017 — and welcomed Helen the following January. “There’s nothing you can say that does [motherhood] justice,” Erin said at the time of her change in fortune.
source: people.com
