Matt Howard and Abby Howard are growing their family.
The TikTokers—parents to son Griffin, 3, and daughter August, 2—shared they are expecting their third baby together.
“Going for our third baby is almost more exciting than ever because now we truly know just how good it is,” the couple told People in an interview published Aug. 20. And while they added that the “genuinely have no preference” when it comes to the baby’s sex, their eldest has been “really hoping for a sister!”
For her part, Abby—who has been open about her life as a mom on social media—emphasized that this experience has already been quite different compared to her previous pregnancies.
“Lots of days I have to remind myself that I’m even pregnant,” she quipped, “and that this is really happening!”
The influencers’ big news comes one year after the pair—who tied the knot in 2019—received backlash over seemingly leaving their kids alone in a cruise ship cabin while they went to dinner.
“We usually would not be making a video like this,” Matt said in a post shared on their joint TikTok at the time, “but there is information circulating about us that is completely untrue.”
He went on to explain that he and Abby “take our role as parents extremely seriously, and we love our children more than anything in the entire world, and we’re very protective of our kids.”
As for what sparked all the speculation? During a seven-night cruise with Abby’s extended family, she posted an Instagram Story that said the couple had gone to dinner and were monitoring their children in their cabin via FaceTime.
“People started to speculate and believe that we had left our children alone in their staterooms,” Matt explained. “And that is just completely untrue, because we had someone with our children at all times on this boat. Period.”
Abby added that, because she could see why her story led to the misunderstanding, she deleted the post several hours after posting.
“I do want to clarify that we have not, would not, will not ever leave our children unattended,” she clarified. “We would never, ever want to put them in harm’s way in any way.”
More recently, the couple decided to stop showing their little ones’ faces online out of, as Abby put it, “an abundance of protection” for their privacy and safety.
“Initially, we did have our firstborn’s face online because we were like, ‘We’re going to continue doing everything we’ve been doing,’” Matt said during a July episode of Two Parents & A Podcast. “’We’ve been vlogging our life, we have a kid now, we’re still vlogging our life.’”
“Then we were thinking, ‘Okay, there’s digital footprints here,’” he added, “and all these things that we’re still learning.”
