Country Singer Lauren Alaina Is Pregnant and Expecting First Baby with Husband Cam Arnold: ‘My Heart Grew’ (Exclusive)

Lauren Alaina is a mom-to-be!

PEOPLE can exclusively confirm the country singer’s happy news after she teased her pregnancy in her new “Those Kind of Women” music video, which premiered on Wednesday, Jan. 22.

“[I didn’t know] I can love something that I haven’t even really held yet. I feel the baby inside me, and it’s kicking me and doing all of the things. It’s like I was the Grinch or something, and my heart grew,” Alaina, 30, tells PEOPLE of expecting a child with her husband Cam Arnold.

Alaina — who married Arnold in February of last year — says the pregnancy has “bonded” them “even more” than their marriage did. But even before marrying him, Alaina sensed Arnold would make a great father one day.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

“My love for him grew that day of getting married, and then finding out we were having a baby together. Walking through this experience with him has been unbelievable,” the “Getting Over Him” singer tells PEOPLE. “I’m looking forward to watching my husband be a dad. He is so obsessed with our animals; he’s a big nurturer in general. In fact, when I was getting ready to marry him, that was something that I knew would be one of the best things about being his wife, was being able to parent with him.”

Before she learned of her pregnancy, Alaina and Arnold had planned to start trying for a baby at the end of 2025 — but mother nature had other plans.

“Now I’m scared because I don’t feel like I passed any sort of test. They don’t make you take a test on being a mom. It’s crazy. People are like, ‘What’s your plan with the birth? And what’s your plan here?” And I’m like, listen, ‘God’s plan. It wasn’t my plan,’ ” she says, adding that she’s been asking her own mom and friends with kids for advice.

Since they got the news, the baby has been a source of joy for Alaina’s family after her father’s death in July.

“I do think that my dad passed away and got up in heaven and was like, ‘Hey, we got to work something out down there to send the family something good.’ And it has been such an unexpected blessing,” she says. “We obviously still talk about and are dealing with the grief of my dad, but this baby has healed a lot of that for us … like it’s a little piece of my dad that will live on.”

The couple already has a name picked out for their little one, and though they’re not ready to reveal the sex yet, Alaina says their baby will be named after a family member.

As for her pregnancy, Alaina feels fortunate that she hasn’t felt “any sickness” yet, but she’s experiencing “a level of tiredness that I did not know existed in this world.” Her cravings have been manageable, too. For her 30th birthday in November, she treated herself to an indulgence she’d been hankering for weeks.

“On my actual birthday, my husband asked me what I wanted to do, and I told him I just wanted to stay home with him and to have dinner. The only thing I have craved this whole pregnancy, he made me for dinner. We had a fire out back, and we had chili cheese dogs,” she says, quipping: “I fought the urge for a while. And finally when I ate a bite of this chili cheese dog, when I tell you I had an emotional response, I almost cried. I literally almost cried over the hot dog.”

Alaina pointed to her pregnancy at the end of the music video for her new single “Those Kind of Women.” She wrote the track before she found out she was pregnant — and it has since taken on a whole new meaning.

“It’s all about the women who raised me… I was really fortunate to be raised around a bunch of very strong women. And when we cut this song, when we recorded this song, I was not pregnant nor thinking about becoming pregnant,” Alaina says.

She adds, “It’s funny how things fell into place. It literally changed the song for me. I already loved it, because it’s about the women who raised me. But, now I am going to be a woman raising a child.”

In the full-circle music video, Alaina debuts her bump for the first time — though it wasn’t actually hers.

“When we shot the video, I barely had a bump. So I actually put a [fake] bump over my pregnant bump to make it bigger so that people knew what was happening visually,” she says. “So, I wore a baby bump for my music video, which is hilarious. Now that it’s coming out, I look pretty close to what it looks like in the video.”