Bunnie Xo recently shared video from after her egg retrieval surgery, a procedure she underwent as part of her and Jelly Roll‘s ongoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) process in their journey toward having a baby together.

Bunnie’s close friend Mimi was there with her when she woke up from anesthesia, but there was one person conspicuously absent from the video: Jelly Roll himself, who was on tour in Canada when the surgery took place.

Several fans noticed his absence, and in a new episode of her Dumb Blonde podcast, Bunnie explained that it wasn’t that he didn’t want to be there. In fact, it was her decision to undergo the procedure without her husband.

“I didn’t want him there,” she explains.

“Literally, when I started planning this last year, I said, ‘Baby, what’s a month you’re going to be out of town?'” the singer’s wife goes on to say. “Because I did not want to have a bad reaction to these hormones and [for] us [to] fight.

“I was like, ‘I will do these shots myself. I want you on tour. Just do whatever you gotta do to not be around.’ So he went on tour in Canada, and that’s when I decided to do this, and that has been the plan from the start,” Bunnie continues.

Read More: Bunnie Xo’s IVF Journey is Taking a Toll on Her Health

She explained that her instinct to undergo a difficult process alone is a “trauma response” from her childhood.

“Because when I was younger, if I got in trouble, I wasn’t allowed to regulate my emotions in front of anybody — my parents would send me to my room,” she recounts. “So whenever I’m going through something that’s heavy for me or I don’t know how to deal with it, I isolate. That’s just how I’ve always been.”

But Bunnie also said that she knew the hormonal component of IVF would be difficult on both of them — especially because Jelly Roll was going through his own treatments at the same time.

“J is also on hormones too, to help him out with his sperm and everything, so we’re two hormonal b–ches in the same house,” she relates.

Read More: Jelly Roll’s ‘Heart of Stone’ Lyrics Find Him at His Lowest Point

Bunnie doesn’t regret her decision to keep her husband separate from the bulk of the IVF process. He was at home for one segment of her medication regimen, when she was on “birth control,” and even that amount of medication caused friction between them.

“I envisioned stabbing my husband with a fork,” she jokes.

Through the hardest moments, though, Bunnie says Jelly Roll supported her when she was feeling overwhelmed.

“J’s so sweet, he just held me, like, ‘We’re making a baby, I love you, keep your eye on the prize,'” she adds.

Are Jelly Roll + Bunnie Xo Having a Baby?

• Jelly and Bunnie have talked about their hopes of having a baby together, but they typically keep the details private.
• Bunnie says she’s dealt with “gross” comments and assumptions about her fertility, especially since they’re pursuing parenthood through IVF and surrogacy.
• Bunnie has suffered miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies in the past.
• Despite keeping much of their journey private, Bunnie says it’s important to her to speak up about infertility in order to help destigmatize a struggle many women face.