Jared and Izzy Golden Submitted photo

U.S. Rep. Jared Golden and his wife, Izzy, have a little something extra to be thankful for this year.

They’re expecting their first child in May, they said this week, and couldn’t be happier about it.

“We’re pumped,” Golden said.

Isobel “Izzy” Golden, a former Lewiston city councilor who finished law school at the University of Maine this year, said so far pregnancy hasn’t hit her too hard.

“The challenging stuff is yet to come,” she said.

Golden, a second-term Democrat, said they have gotten a nursery ready in the new house they bought in Lewiston last summer. In fact, he said, it looks as though they’re still moving because they’ve been so busy with his campaign and Izzy’s Maine Bar exam.

“We just recently acquired a kitchen table,” he said.

Izzy Golden said they still have a few months to get ready.

They said their baby will be the first grandchild on both sides of the family so everybody’s especially excited.

They said they know the sex of the baby, but are going to stay mum about it.

The congressman said that during the campaign, he got advice to tell the news before Election Day so he might perhaps get a little bump in support out of it. But Golden said he wasn’t about to do that.

“We’re a little more private than that,” he said.

They decided to say something about it in public on Thanksgiving, he said, “because we are so thankful and excited” at the looming change in their life.

With “the way things are,” Izzy Golden said, it’s especially nice to have something positive and hopeful.

She said that in 2019, she had begun to grow nervous about what it was going to be like in 2020 trying to study for the Bar exam in the midst of what was expected to be a heated campaign. And that was before the pandemic hit, making everything that much more topsy-turvy.

They didn’t anticipate adding a pregnancy to the mix, but always wanted to start a family.

“People do see us taking on a lot at once,” Izzy Golden said. One of her aunts asked what was going to come next, a trip to the moon?

Everybody they’ve told has been happy for them, they said.

Jared Golden said having a baby is “a very big thing, very exciting” for them but he recognizes that it is “normal news” in every family.

“It’s just the next step,” he said.

Golden said lots of members of the House have children and manage to cope.

Izzy Golden said it will help to have grandparents who don’t live far away.

The congressman said he’ll likely have a new partner as he travels the district.

“I’m sure I’ll be hitting the road with a kid in tow,” he said.