Tyler Hubbard has a confession — he’s going to be a dad!

The Florida Georgia Line member and his wife Hayley are expecting their first child, the couple confirm to PEOPLE exclusively.

“There’s a lot of excitement — it’s something we’ve looked forward to for a while,” Tyler, 30, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue of the new addition, who is due to make his or her arrival in December.

Explains Hayley of how the two found out the baby news, “We’d just gotten back from California and I wasn’t sleeping … I woke up one night and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh. I’m pregnant.’ ”

“So I took a test the next morning and I couldn’t even contain myself, I was so excited. I honestly didn’t have time to think of how to surprise Tyler, so I just jumped back into bed and showed him the pregnancy stick,” shares The Vogue Trip founder, who admits she hasn’t “been feeling great” during her first trimester.

“Tons of morning sickness. Just nausea all day, but that’s to be expected,” Hayley, 30, tells PEOPLE. But instead of staying at home and “feeling sorry for” herself, Hayley flew to Malawi with the UCSF School of Nursing to advocate for maternal child health initiatives.

“I’m not going to lie, it was pretty rough,” says Hayley of traveling while not feeling well. “I was definitely exhausted.”

She continues, “But it put things into perspective for me because we were working in Malawi with the UCSF School of Nursing and so we were in a lot of hospitals with women that just had babies. They were with their newborns in these dirty congested hospitals and no sheets on the bed — conditions you would never want to have your baby in — so suddenly I didn’t feel as sick or feel as bad.”

Although “it was the best thing” for Hayley to “be away from everything” and have time “to let it soak in” that she was pregnant, the most challenging part for the soon-to-be mama was that she missed her husband.

“That was probably the hardest two and a half weeks, just being pregnant and being away from Tyler,” she says.

As for what the couple is most looking forward to when it comes to being first-time parents? “It’s just an exciting phase of our life and an exciting next step,” says the “Cruise” singer.

“There’s a lot that we’re going to get to learn,” explains Tyler. “Hayley and I both really love learning and growing as people. For us, it’s the next phase and the next stage of life that God can really teach us a lot and show us patience … and selflessness.”

He adds, “To be honest, our world, at this point in our life, it revolves around what we want it to revolve around — our wants and our needs and our desires, what we have going on in our schedule … and all that’s about to change.”

“Trying to have the balance of raising a kid and raising a family with the lifestyle that we have, and the pace of life that we live — it’s going to be fun, it’s going to be challenging and something that we’re really, really excited about,” Tyler continues. “There’s all kinds of emotions on both ends of the spectrum from excitement to [nervousness]. But the excitement definitely [outweighs] the nerves.”