“We’re waiting to find out the gender cuz I’ve always loved a good surprise, but in the meantime we’ve been busy getting the nursery ready, meeting with my birth team, eating more protein than usual, going to Pilates, getting good sleep, and drinking lots of water,” Aly wrote. “Somehow we’ve been able to still spend days in the studio writing music which hopefully finds its way into baby’s soul. I’m so grateful for all the amazing women I’ve leaned on these past 6 months (you know who you are) it makes me hopeful about the goodness in the world 💜.”

“It was nice that it ended up happening quickly,” the singer says, explaining that she originally wanted to wait until she wrapped up her With Love From Aly & AJ tour to start family planning. “But also I think that took us by surprise in a way where we were like, ‘Oh, we thought that maybe this would take us eight, nine months to get pregnant or a year,’ and it didn’t.”

While Aly told Stephen immediately, she waited to tell her sister until after the concert because she didn’t want to “take away from the special meaning of that night.”

She recalls taking AJ out to dinner a few days after the show, saying, “I was like, ‘There was a special guest that was at the Greek that you didn’t know was there,’ and she was like, ‘Who?’ I was like, ‘There’s a baby,’ and I touched my stomach, and then she was like, ‘What?!’ She was just really excited and overjoyed. From there, we told the rest of the family.”

The mother-to-be says she wants to make sure her child learns to have a “thoughtful and kind” outlook toward others.

“[We want to teach them] they do have some privilege, obviously, growing up in Los Angeles with two white parents. I think putting that as a topic to talk about with your kid early on is really important,” she says, “because then they’ll be empathetic toward all kinds of people in their future.”

And as far as baby names go, Aly and Stephen are looking for something “unique” but not too outlandish. 

“We want the name to feel unique, but I also don’t want people to roll their eyes, like, ‘This is such a celebrity kid name. This is so ridiculous,'” she admits. “So I’m like, let’s just stick with a cool classic name, maybe something that sounds like an author or a writer or a musician.”

Congratulations to the growing family!