‘Real Housewives of New Jersey’ Star Rachel Fuda Is Pregnant, Expecting Third Child Via IVF

Rachel Fuda’s family is growing!

via: People

The Real Housewives of New Jersey couple is expecting a new baby, an addition who will join their three other kids: daughters Gianella Jolie, 4, and Giuliana Rose, 2, as well as Jaiden — John’s 17-year-old son from a previous relationship whom Rachel adopted.

To help celebrate their baby-to-be, the Fuda family posed for a family photo shoot on the beach, pictures from which they're sharing with PEOPLE first.

"We're so excited," Rachel, 33, says exclusively of her happy news, which she first shared with her RHONJ castmates on the season 14 "Off the Rails" special, which aired Sunday, Aug. 12. "We're ready to be a party of six!"

"John and I always felt like our family wasn't complete," she continues. "We actually have a table in my kitchen and when we sit down for dinner, there's one empty chair. And we always kind of looked at each other like, 'Oh, it'd be nice to fill that seat.' So we always had the room for one more in our home and in our hearts, and we're both just so happy to be welcoming another baby into the family. It felt like it was time."

RHONJ viewers know Rachel has made no secret of her desire to have another child.

In season 13, her first on the Bravo series, Rachel spoke to John about going again through the process of IVF, which she used to conceive Gianella and Giuliana. "The clock is ticking," she said then, reminding him that they had five embryos still viable for transfer. "I just feel like, four kids, that's a good number. The time is now. This is like, a year process. I want to do this and be done."

Though John was reluctant at the time, Rachel tells PEOPLE they started the process again once cameras went down on season 14.

It wasn't easy. To prepare for the transfer, Rachel first has to come off the arthritis medication she takes to treat the chronic illness, symptoms of which she first started experiencing as a kid. She then had to make sure her body would be able to accept the transfer, which proved challenging.

"There's so many things that have to go right when you're going through IVF, and this time around, there were a lot of roadblocks for us," Rachel says, explaining that she struggled to get her cycle and lining "on point" at first. "It took a couple months of us working with my doctor to figure out when this could actually happen for us. And it was really frustrating because it just kept getting delayed."

Just when Rachel had given up hope, she got the go-ahead. "I thought, 'This is my last shot. If this doesn't work, we're done,' " she recalls. "Because first of all, it costs a lot of money. But second of all, you're on all these medications that just throw your body off. I was hormonal, breaking out so bad, tired and on edge; my mood was going up, down, up, down. I just felt like, 'I can't do this anymore.' "

But she didn't have to worry for much longer. The transfer took, something Rachel learned when she took a pregnancy test she'd ordered online.

"They make you wait 10 days for your blood test, but I had to know so I took a test and it came back positive," Rachel says. "And then I was like, 'Well, let me not say anything to John, just in case God forbid it's a false positive.' So I wait until I got the call and then surprised him with the happy news."