The Bachelor alum Ben Higgins has become a father, welcoming a bouncing baby girl with his wife of three years Jessica Clarke.
Ben, 35, first came to national attention on The Bachelorette before being named The Bachelor for the 2016 season and proposing to Lauren Bushnell.
He and Lauren broke up in 2017, and the following year he struck up his romance with Jessica, whom he married in November 2021.
The couple joyously announced last August that they were expecting a baby, and Jessica subsequently shared that she conceived via intrauterine insemination.
Now, Ben has ecstatically revealed on Instagram that their daughter has arrived, writing on Instagram: ‘Also I am biased but God spent a little more time on our baby girl because she’s real beautiful!’
His message was accompanied by an image of Jessica lying in her hospital bed and cradling the newborn as Ben leaned over them.
The Bachelor alum Ben Higgins has become a father, welcoming a bouncing baby girl with his wife of three years Jessica Clarke
‘Update and more to come but baby girl Higgins has entered the world. She is healthy. @jessclarke_ is doing so well,’ he wrote.
‘I don’t yet have words for what just happened but the update right now is we have a daughter and Jess is recovering so well.’
He added: ‘The nurses and doctors who cared for us should be lifted high. Also I am biased but God spent a little more time on our baby girl because she’s real beautiful!’
Ben, who hid the baby’s face behind an emoji on Instagram, noted for his fans: ‘This beauty will be revealed soon but first she needs a bath.’
He went public with Jessica’s pregnancy last August, posting on Instagram: ‘The next chapter of our love story! Baby girl coming in February.’
Shortly thereafter, Jessica was open about her fertility issues, saying she had not been ‘ovulating regularly’ before she became pregnant.
She opted for intrauterine insemination, ‘which is the step before IVF,’ she said on an episode of her and Ben’s podcast Almost Famous.
‘It took us one try of IUI, so when it comes to fertility journeys we got really, really lucky,’ Jessica acknowledged while explaining her own process.
Ben, 35, first came to national attention on The Bachelorette before being named The Bachelor for the 2016 season and proposing to Lauren Bushnell; he and Lauren are pictured in 2016
He and Lauren broke up in 2017, and the following year he struck up his romance with Jessica, whom he married in November 2021
The couple joyously announced last August that they were expecting a baby , and Jessica subsequently revealed she conceived via intrauterine insemination
Ben, who started dating Jessica in 2018 and married her in November 2021, has been open about the fact that they abstained from sex before tying the knot.
He explained that he and Jessica share a faith in Jesus Christ that is ‘the foundation, the corner of our life,’ and that they ‘believe that sex is sacred,’ on the podcast Talking It Out hosted by Bachelor Nation alumni Bryan Abasolo and Mike Johnson.
Ben added that while he had not been a virgin when he started dating Jessica, she had ‘held sex dear and had abstained from sex her whole life’ before marriage.
‘We both talked it out and said: “What is the wise thing to do here for us?” It was: “Hey, you’ve worked so hard to keep this moment special for you and I have had failed relationships where that has been a part of my life. And so, let’s try. Like, let’s see what happens there because we have a whole life together.”‘
Ben shot to fame in 2015 as a contestant on The Bachelorette, one of the cavalcade of men who competed for Kaitlyn Bristowe’s affections.
Although Kaitlyn did not ultimately choose him, ABC selected him to be on the next season of The Bachelor, on which he proposed to Lauren Bushnell.
Amid their engagement, they starred on a spin-off Freeform reality show called Ben & Lauren: Happily Ever After? before splitting in 2017.
