What you need to know
Nicole Boggs and her husband thought they were done having kids.
The mother of the 11-year-old was 48 years old and had given birth to her youngest child four years earlier. “My body was changing,” she tells People. “I thought, ‘Okay, I’ve entered a new phase of womanhood.'”
She and her husband had been discussing whether they could start traveling, assuming they were finished raising a toddler in a few years.
So, naturally, Boggs says she was “shocked” when she learned she was pregnant with her 12th child last summer. She was so shocked that she waited nine days without even telling her husband. But nothing could have prepared her for the news she received three weeks later: that her daughter was also pregnant.
Megan Huff, one of Bogg’s daughters, was similarly surprised when her mother sat down with her family and heard the news she had been expecting. “My parents always said the Lord would decide how many kids we would have, but we were used to 11,” she tells PEOPLE. “So it took some getting used to, but I was really excited.”
Hough continues. “And she looked at me and said, ‘I want to be pregnant with one of my daughters, too.'”
Courtesy of Nicole Boggs
At that point, Huff didn’t know she was in the early stages of her first pregnancy. But a few weeks later, Huff received the life-changing news that she was giving birth to her first child. The moment she shared the excitement with her mother was like no other.
One evening, the two were sitting on the balcony, chatting alone. Huff remembers thinking the timing was perfect because it would be difficult to get one-on-one time with Boggs with so many kids running around.
“I just remember her being so excited,” Huff recalls, but Boggs says that’s a bit of an understatement.
“When she told me that, I thought, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,'” Boggs said, getting a little emotional. “What a wonderful, wonderful opportunity.”
As a result of their rare joint pregnancy, Ms. Boggs was able to share real-time advice with Ms. Huff about the various stages of her pregnancy, even more so than she did when her other three grandchildren were born.
“It’s the worst because I forget everything,” Boggs says with a laugh. “Every time I get pregnant, I think, ‘What did I do?’ And even my mom would say, ‘Nicole, you had all these babies and I told you to write all this down.’ ”
Courtesy of Nicole Boggs
But now her own pregnancy is a harbinger of what her daughter will experience in eight weeks. ”
“It was fun comparing each other’s schedules,” Huff adds. “When I had health questions, she was very helpful in answering them. Just having someone very close to her to ask, ‘Hey, what’s going on?'” It was very helpful. ”
Never miss a news. 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 human interest stories.
A few months after their respective due dates, Boggs and Huff are starting to get excited about what it will be like to raise a child together, especially since they live so close together in East Tennessee.
When asked if she expected her two young children to become best friends, Hough laughed, “I hope so.” “I think it’s really cool because they’re going to be the same age.”
Courtesy of Nicole Boggs
Hough continues. “I have a lot of siblings and obviously filled in the gaps, but it would have been so nice to have cousins the same age. I’m really looking forward to my daughter and my aunt, but they’re going to be more like cousins.”
