Doctor’s appointments became surreal—Wilson, who Ciara said sometimes had to miss previous ultrasounds because of his football season, wasn’t able to accompany her once again, this time for a different reason. “That was just such, wow, an out-of-body experience,” she says. “He drove me all the way down to my doctor’s office, an hour drive to my doctor’s office, to sit in the car and FaceTime with me to see the screen.”

Luckily the rest of Ciara’s pregnancy with Win went pretty much without a hitch. Besides searing hip pain at the end, she says, it was much like the others. “I’ve been very fortunate enough to have pretty easy pregnancies,” she says. When it came time to deliver, Wilson was able to be in the room, although COVID restrictions meant that no one else was around to help. “Russ was literally everything in one,” she jokes. “He was my husband. He was the photographer, the videographer. He was so cute because he set up the cameras. He was looking at the camera, checking the angle, and [saying], ‘The baby is going to come out this way, so I’ll be right here, and this camera will be right here.’ And then he also got to help pull the baby out, which was really sweet.”

The other difference, of course, was having to labor with a mask on. “My obstetrician, who’s delivered all my babies, was not playing any games about this COVID. I literally made my first push with Win and then he was like, ‘She needs a mask on. Get a mask on.’ It happened so fast, so I still had my mask [down]. But he was like, ‘Oh, no, no. She gon’ put that mask on.’ My mask was pretty good. I could still breathe alright through it, so that was good. But it was like, ‘Wow. This is crazy. I’m having to deliver a baby with a mask. What in the world?’” In another stroke of luck, the birthing part of her labor was incredibly fast—20 minutes, she thinks, maybe less. “It was literally three pushes, good ones. Three good pushes and he was here,” she says. She welcomed Win into the world by singing a perfect rendition of “Happy Birthday” and posted the video on her Instagram a day after giving birth.

Ciara’s willingness to invite the public into the most intimate aspects of her life is perhaps one reason why so many people feel so invested in her relationship with Wilson, her husband of four years. There’s also the fact that they are just cute together. Besides the fairy-tale courtship and wedding, there’s also the sense that they have each other’s backs, that they’re rooting for each other’s success, deeply entrenched in their faith and thoroughly in love. But 2020 threw many couples for a loop, and I wondered if it had a similar effect on Ciara’s relationship. It turns out the opposite is true.

“What I think that’s been really great for us because it still makes us—we can be in the same house and still miss each other,” she says. “But also, because work still goes on, we’re not just kicking back like, ‘Oh, what we doing? Watching TV.’ We’re still grinding. We’re still working. He’s sometimes working in another room in another section of the house, and I’m just working in another section too. And sometimes we go hours doing that. So then, by the time the end of the day comes, ‘Oh, my gosh. I really missed you.’”

We’re still on the subject about her love for her husband when, as if on cue, Wilson wanders into the room off-camera, wondering what she’s up to. Ciara looks up from her screen and lights up when she sees him. “I’m doing an interview,” she says, smiling.