Emmerdale's James Hooton (Sam Dingle) is having a baby after 2-year fertility struggle

But talking about the 9-year gap between their first child and their second – James, 42, revealed it wasn't easy for Nancy to get pregnant this time.

"We were hoping to get pregnant sooner - we’ve been trying for about two years but it wasn’t happening," he told OK! magazine.

"We’d just started going down the fertility route and were only three months into that when it happened without any intervention."

James said Nancy had undergone a hysterosalpingogram - a very long word for an X-ray that looks inside the uterus and fallopian tubes to see if there's anything that might stop a pregnancy.

"Then suddenly out of the blue we fell pregnant and it was a pleasant surprise," he said.

Nancy said that finding out she was pregnant was "surreal and emotional".

She added: "Because we’d been trying for so long, we had a massive stockpile of pregnancy tests, which we’d been doing sporadically. So one night I went upstairs while Lily was in bed, did a pregnancy test and then ran back downstairs and said: 'Is that two lines James?'"

The overjoyed couple have already been thinking about names – and might continue with their flower theme after daughter Lily.

"I quite like Rose but we've not got a definite name picked, so we’re going to wait until she’s born," Nancy said.

Congratulations both!

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