Brooke Eden and Wife Hilary Hoover Are Expecting First Baby: 'Cried for 10 Minutes' (Exclusive)

Country artist Brooke Eden and wife Hilary Hoover are expanding their family!

“We were in our kitchen and we just hugged and cried for 10 minutes,” Eden, 35, tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview about the day she found out her wife was pregnant. “I looked in [pregnancy test] about a hundred times, and then of course we waited to confirm it one hundred percent with the doctor. And when we got the news, we were both so excited and just the happiest.”

“And pleasantly surprised,” adds Hoover, 34, whose due date is Nov. 7. “We’re just on the other side of the first quarter, sliding into [the] other [trimester[ right now. I had a rough few weeks, but other than that, I’m feeling great.”

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Brooke Eden (left) and Hilary Hoover.

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Brooke Eden and Wife Hilary Hoover Are Freezing Their Eggs: ‘We Definitely Want Kiddos’ (Exclusive)

Married in 2022, the longtime couple who reside in Nashville have long dreamt of this day, as the two say they always knew that someday, children would play a part in their love story.

“The very first day that I met [Hilary], I told her she was meant to be a mom,” recalls Eden, who broke onto the country scene in 2014 with her single “American Dreamin’.” “[Hilary] she just had the most natural maternal instinct. We knew from the very beginning that we wanted to start a family together. It was always just a question of when and how.”

The “when and how” became clearer in February 2023 when the couple began meeting with Dr. Abby Eblen at the Nashville Fertility Center in hopes of conceiving.

“There are a lot of decisions to make when it comes to having a baby as a gay couple,” explains Hoover, who first met Eden in 2015. “We actually talked a lot over the years about the different options between in vitro fertilization (IVF) and adoption, and we passed both times several times. In the end, we decided that we would try to get pregnant with one of our embryos first.”

Hilary Hoover (left) and Brooke Eden.

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So last year, both Hoover and Eden went through the often grueling process of egg retrieval.

“We definitely knew we wanted to use an anonymous sperm bank donor,” Hoover continues. “And then, we both wanted to try egg retrieval, and basically if we get a few embryos from that, then we’ll try to get pregnant. I always wanted to carry a child. Brooke never cared that much about being pregnant. So, believe it or not, that part of the discussion was easy. Just between the two of us, it was always known that I would carry our babies.”

That’s not to say that Eden herself isn’t the motherly type.

Brooke Eden (left) and Hilary Hoover.

Ford Fairchild

“I knew I wanted to be a mom ever since I was little, but I always thought I would adopt because I never thought I would get married,” Eden says quietly. “I always thought I would be a single mother with an adopted baby. Then I met [Hilary] and it was like, ‘Wait a minute. I’m falling in love with my surrogate mother. She will be my wife and carry my child.'”

However, neither of them expected Hoover to get pregnant so soon. “We made our first transfer in mid-February, and it’s one we’re lucky to say has worked,” beams Hoover. “It was very strange, but within an hour or two after the transfer, I said, ‘I’ve never been pregnant, but I think you would feel this way. if I was pregnant.’”

And she was.

Brooke Eden (left) and Hilary Hoover.

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Now, as they eagerly await the arrival of their first baby this fall, both Eden and Hoover say they’ll never look at Mother’s Day the same way again.

“It hit me pretty hard when I thought about Mother’s Day this year and that it’s technically the first one with a baby on the way, and next year we’ll have a baby in our arms,” ​​says Hoover. “There’s definitely such a wide-eyed moment when that happens, especially as a gay person.”

These days, the couple says they’ve started converting their former exercise room into a nursery. “We think we want to put a little jungle theme in the nursery,” says Hoover, who isn’t quite sure if she and Eden will want to find out the baby’s gender. “It’s something we envisioned for a child’s room.”

Brooke Eden (left) and Hilary Hoover.

Ford Fairchild

And that’s not all they imagine.

“We have several other embryos frozen on ice, so hopefully we’re done with the egg retrieval part,” Hoover concludes. “I hope we have enough frozen embryos to have all our future babies just from the transfer. I don’t mean to sound corny, but we’ve been totally into each other and taking care of each other since we found out we were pregnant. I feel like it brought us so much closer.”

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Source: HIS Education