The former Bachelor previously said he was getting a vasectomy.
Arie Luyendyk Jr. and Lauren Burnham may not be done having kids after all. The parents of three gave ET's Lauren Zima a tour of their stunning Scottsdale, Arizona, home, and revealed that they could one day welcome another baby into the fold.
Arie and Lauren, who tied the knot in 2019, share 2-year-old Alessi, and 6-month-old twins Lux and Senna. In October, Arie said he was "definitely getting a vasectomy" after becoming a dad of three. That may not be the case, though, Lauren told ET.
"I’d wager to say any twin dad has at some point said he’d get a vasectomy, I think I still will, but Lauren is entertaining [the idea of having another child]," Arie said. "... I think women all have amnesia. They forget how hard it is... She goes, 'It wouldn’t be that bad in a couple years, maybe.'"
"Every time I say that he's like, 'Oh I better schedule this vasectomy tomorrow,'" Lauren quipped. "... He's like, 'You are crazy.'"
"I’m like, 'No, I need to schedule it,'" Arie agreed. "[But] the appointment has not been [made]."
Lauren herself isn't so sure that she wants another kid, rather she's "just not 100 percent shutting the door on that."
"I know it’s very hard right now, and if you were to ask me right now I’d say absolutely not, but if we go maybe three, four years, if we only had one more," she said.
Arie, though, isn't so sure.
"I’m 40 years old," he pointed out to his 30-year-old wife. "I’m also not young. She forgets how old I am... She forgets I'm 10 years older sometimes. I think like, 'If I have a baby at 45, what am I going to? Can I run around with that baby?'... When they're 16 I will be 60."
The pair met on Arie's season of The Bachelor in 2018. At the end of the season, Arie popped the question to Becca Kufrin, but the pair split when he realized he was still in love with Lauren.
Arie and Lauren got engaged on his season's After the Final Rose special. Given the drama surrounding Arie's first proposal, he recently re-proposed to Lauren with a five-carat ring, much to her delight.
"I had dropped a couple of hints," Lauren admitted of wanting a second proposal. "After our engagement, I was like, 'Man, that was kind of a bummer.' There was so much drama surrounding that moment and it made everything so heightened. Everyone in the audience was mad at us and all of that, so it tainted it a little bit for me. I had voiced that."
"There’s a lot of pressure to propose on the show in the way that they want you to. I think it was really cool to have something just for us," Arie agreed. "We always talked about that. I think during the whole time we were on the show I asked her, 'Would you want to have it outside of the show or during the show?' She kind of left it up to me, and so now looking back, I think it would've been cool to just share that moment for us. That's what we wanted this time around."
The pair tied the knot the year after their initial engagement, when Lauren was pregnant with Alessi. Today, they count their framed vows from their big day as one of the most special items in their home.
"[We wrote them] on the same paper. We didn't know that. I just had a notebook, and then he had a notebook that looked exactly the same," Lauren told ET. "... I remember us both saying we're there for the beautiful moments, but we're also there for the challenges. We can always get through them if we're together."
"We also have a moment where we talk about seeing it all with our little girl, because at the time she was pregnant with Alessi," Arie said. "... We basically emulated the same thoughts."
Fast forward less than a year later, and the couple revealed they were expecting twins, after suffering a miscarriage. Arie shared that Lauren started "laughing hysterically" when she found that she had two babies on the way.
"We wished and prayed for them for so long and we got them," she gushed of the babies.
During her pregnancy, the couple set out to renovate their home, with Lauren taking the lead on much of the design.
"The decor, we worked with a local design firm called Urban Revival and they’re amazing. They’re great at pulling everything together," she said. "As far as the house remodels goes, I came up with an inspo for the house, and then I’m like, 'Arie, what do you think? Do you love this?' He’s like, 'Hate that and love this.'"
"I’m very opinionated when it comes to things," Arie admitted. "... She kind of takes a while to make a decision. I’m like, 'No, that’s it. We gotta do that'... We have a similar style, which is really cool. She’s kind of pushed me a little bit more... We did some things that are a little out of the box that I think are really cool."
In June 2021, the twins arrived. Things took a scary turn, though, when Senna was admitted to the NICU.
"I was pregnant with them almost full term, so it didn’t cross my mind that they could be in the NICU," Lauren said. "I thought we were past that, so it just sort of hit me when I realized that she was going to have to stay there. I sort of didn’t realize what they were telling me. I was like, 'Is she gonna be OK? Is she gonna have developmental issues later in life?' It was really scary."
"It was terrifying," Arie agreed. "You would be in there and we'd be feeding her and then all of a sudden all of the machines would go off and she would stop breathing... She would turn a different color... Your emotions are just going out of control."
Eventually, the family of five made it home, and Alessi was ready for big sister duty.
"She is great. She is so sweet to them. She's always making them laugh. They are just enamored with her all the time. It's so cute to watch," Lauren said, with Arie adding, "[She's] so sweet and she just has such a calm, very nice energy about her, just like her mom."
Now as a toddler, Arie said that Alessi's "vocabulary is getting better and better every week."
"I feel like she's mimicking us all the time. We have to watch what we say," he admitted. "She always goes, 'What the heck!' And you're like, 'I can see where you get that.'"
As for the twins, Arie said, "Lux is really good at rolling over, and he's sort of exploring more and more. Senna was ahead of him at first, and now the roles have completely reversed. I feel like Lux will crawl first."
"Lux is very calm and smiley 90 percent of the time. He's just so easygoing," Lauren agreed. "And then Senna is just a little pistol. She's so happy, her smile [is] just sparkly. It's so cute, but then in a split second she could be so pissed and she's screaming and backbending."
Overall, they said, Senna "might be our most difficult one," while Lux is "the easiest baby ever."
"If we could have another Lux guaranteed we'd probably have another baby, but we can't take that chance," Lauren said, with Arie agreeing, "No, we cannot."
These days, Arie said, their lives are full of "insanity" and "chaos."
"Right now are the toughest they're ever going to be," Arie said. "... But it is sort of cool, fast forwarding, all the kids will be close together in ages and they can play together, so we keep looking at the future like, 'It’ll get better. It’ll get better.'"
"Most days are really hard right now, but we have really good days too," Lauren added. "We just have to remember this phase right now is temporary, and we'll get through it, and everything will be OK."
As for how they get through the hard moments, both Arie and Lauren credit their ability to support each other.
"It's just been a whirlwind the past few years, but I think everything we've been through, we've been through it together, and it's just brought us closer," Lauren said. "... I just think it helps to, you know, have your person. We're best friends and we know that we both care about each other. We always have the best intentions no matter what goes on. We just communicate really well."
"I think the great thing about us is that, if she’s having a hard day I can kind of get it together and get through the day and carry the family, and she does the same thing," Arie told ET. "We do really lean on each other."
Through it all, Arie and Lauren document their lives on their YouTube channel, sharing videos that they're excited to look back on in the years to come.
"I really like it because we can go back and watch those videos. We can go back and watch Alessi's first birthday, or us finding out that we're having twins. Those were all moments we caught on camera," he said. "I feel like we're good at being in the moment, but also vlogging things. I feel like that could be a tough balance, but I love that we have those things to look back on."
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