‘Married at First Sight’ Star Jamie Otis Calls Welcoming Son Hendrix Amid Coronavirus Pandemic ‘Really Scary’ (Exclusive)

Jamie Otis is soaking in the baby days with son Hendrix as she and husband Doug Hehner make the big jump from a family of three to a family of four. The Married at First Sight star told PopCulture.com that while it’s been “day and night” adding an infant to the mix with 2-year-old daughter Henley, she couldn’t be happier to have her rainbow baby.

“I feel like I was waiting for him forever, but now he’s here and it’s going so fast,” she told PopCulture just days after Hendrix marked his 1-month-milestone. “It’s a handful, but I can’t complain.” Giving birth at home without any kind of pain medication was never in the plans, Otis continued, but the coronavirus pandemic made her wary of the kind of hospital birth she had with Henley. “It was really scary to be pregnant and knowing that I’m giving birth to a brand new baby amid a pandemic,” she admitted.

Unmedicated birth was an unbelievably painful, yet “miraculous” experience, she told PopCulture. “When you can feel every little bit of what’s going on as you birth your baby into the world — don’t get me wrong, it’s very painful — but it’s miraculous and magical.” Otis recalled beginning to panic amid the “all-consuming” pain and concerns about birthing at home, but knew from her labor and delivery nurse training that panicking would only get her into trouble.

“I had to put that aside and just be a laboring mother and not think about all the things that could go wrong,” she told PopCulture. Going through so much pain to welcome her son, Otis says she didn’t realize how strong she is. “I think all women are that strong, but I didn’t realize it about myself until I had gone through it,” she said.

Looking back on the experience, which she filmed for Lifetime as well as her own social media channels, Otis said she would definitely consider a home birth for baby number three. “The bond that I have with my son is different than what I had with my daughter,” she noted.

Caring for her kids while continuing to social distance at home has been tricky, as Otis explained she can’t just have her husband run out for medicine in the middle of the night due to changed store hours and the risk of infecting their kids. “We don’t have that luxury in the pandemic,” she said. “We have got to be prepared for that moment.”

That’s while Otis has been relying on her partner, Align Baby Probiotic, Colic Relief, which is a lactose-free, gluten-free, soy-free, dairy-free, and vegetarian way to help keep Hendrix healthy and soothe fussiness and crying. Building the healthy bacteria in her son’s gut is particularly important during the first 1,000 days of a baby’s life, which makes the probiotic a must-have in her pandemic preparation kit. “I was grabbing diapers and wipes and Tylenol, but also Align Baby Probiotic, because I wanted to make sure I was set.”