‘Home Town’: Erin Napier Says It’s ‘Weird and Unnecessary’ When Fans Ask About Future Kids

Erin Napier is tired of people questioning her reproductive situation. The star of HGTV‘s Home Town, who with her husband Ben Napier is mom to 3-year-old daughter Helen, told PEOPLE this week that she wants to change the narrative when it comes to the “delicate conversation” surrounding women’s bodies — especially after she shut down pregnancy rumors in October after she posted a photo wearing loose-fitting clothes.

“I think it’s really weird and unnecessary,” she told the magazine of the topic of her reproductive situation. “People saying things like, ‘You need to give Helen a sibling,’ or ‘She doesn’t need to be an only child.’” She continued, “I have a lot of dear people close to me who aren’t able to have children and want to desperately. When things like that are said, it cuts deep. It’s not necessarily a problem for us, but I want to be a voice for the people that I love.”

Before Erin was pregnant with Helen, doctors found that Erin had a perforated appendix that had repeatedly ruptured and healed itself. At the time, she was told she probably couldn’t have children as a result of it — but to her and Ben’s shock, they found out on Mother’s Day in 2017 that they were going to be parents. Ben said they were “late to the party” of tarting a family well into their thirties. “I mean, we’re in south Mississippi, our friends were having kids all around us, so I think that we definitely felt pressure.”

“I felt pressure from the clock more so than anything else. But I want to change the narrative,” Erin added. “It’s a delicate conversation and people need to be more careful talking about it.”

As far as expanding their own family, the Napiers said they’re happy with whatever the future brings. “We’d love to have more, but if we can’t, we’re perfectly happy with Helen,” Ben said. “We’re big fans of adoption, too.”

The candid interview comes a few weeks after Erin removed an Instagram photo of Helen after it received “cruel” comments from some of her followers. Even though the couple never shows Helen’s face online, the post still drew negative comments from trolls about Helen’s hair, as well as comments about how the family was living during the pandemic. Napier pointed out that people see only a small part of their lives on social media.

“Your quarterly PSA about how to be a decent person on social media,” she began her lengthy post earlier this month. “Because Ben and I have this job, it means we open ourselves up to the public in ways that are sometimes vulnerable and I think there’s value in that. I think there is a fine line between privacy and helping others by being vulnerable about some aspects of your life when you’re in the spotlight,” she continued, in part.

She said there were “cruel comments” piling up “within moments” of the post being published. She pushed back on the comments from people accusing the Napiers of not taking the coronavirus seriously “as if from a tiny vignette you can see the whole picture of precaution and how we wear ourselves out keeping our family safe every day, the endless testing while trying not to sacrifice every last shred of normalcy when it’s as safe as it can possibly be.” She wrote that she removed the photo “to be a good steward of my baby’s image and protector of my heart.” In the end, she wrote, “If you feel you may be a person capable of communicating this way, please see yourself away from my account or I’ll be glad to help you do that.”