“We’re just so focused on him right now,” Ray says of her little boy
Vanessa Ray’s family has grown by one more!
The actress, who is currently starring in her tenth season of Blue Bloods, welcomed a baby boy via adoption with husband Landon Beard, she exclusively tells PEOPLE.
“Isaac Ray Beard was born on November 7th and he kind of came into our life, it was quite a whirlwind,” Ray shares.
“My husband and I weren’t totally sure if we were going to have kids, at what point in our life that made sense and all those things,” she continues. “I was at work one day, honestly I was about to do a family dinner and I just had this overwhelming sensation of family and what I love about our life and all of these things.”
Ray remembers calling her husband sobbing, telling him, “I think we’re supposed to be parents” and “I think we’re supposed to adopt.”
One of the first people Ray told about her decision to adopt was friend and costar Bridget Moynahan.
“I literally was at work crying and I went to Bridget Moynahan and I was like, ‘I just called Landon and we think we should be parents,’ ” Ray shares. She was like, ‘Great, you need to talk to Peter Hermann.'”
While Ray had never met Peter Hermann, she knew that the actor and his wife, actress Mariska Hargitay, had adopted their son Andrew and daughter Amaya. Luckily, Ray and Hermann were slated for a scene together in the next script.
“Graciously, he really held our hand and walked us through everything that we would need to know about adoption,” Ray recalls. “It’s a lot of first dates almost. It almost feels like there’s a ton of heartbreak that comes along with it.”
When Ray and her husband began the adoption process, it took about a year to find a lawyer and fill out the required paperwork. After that, the process moved a lot faster than they thought it would.
The couple put their information up on an adoption website on a Monday and by the next Saturday, the two were on a plane to meet a potential birth mother.
“It went super fast,” Ray shares. “She was like, ‘He’s due in four weeks, so we have to do this quickly.’ We were like, ‘Whoa, okay.'”
Their son Isaac was born a week early, only one day before the actor’s strike ended. “So we can attribute Isaac [to] ending the strike,” the actress jokes. “It all happened in three weeks, really from zero to three weeks. Then we were bringing him out and it was incredible.”
Since everything fell into place so quickly, Ray wasn’t given much time to prepare.
“You’re going through the process of speaking to different birth mothers and learning the laws in different states and things, and it just doesn’t feel like you can buy a crib,” she says. “You’re not going to buy a crib and pacifiers for a baby that you don’t even know you have.”
When the couple found out they would be adopting their son, Ray says their friends rallied around them to create a nursery in 24 hours.
“I’m not kidding you, in 24 hours we had a makeshift nursery put together. A crib, pacifiers, bottles, Baby Brezza, all the things,” Ray says. “We had everything that we needed from our friends. We didn’t have to buy anything. We really didn’t right away, at least for the first three months.”
As for how they settled on a name, Ray says she and her husband had discussed it almost 12 years prior when they were on a hike together. She was inspired by the biblical story of Isaac, who came to Sarah and Abraham later in life.
“My husband was like, ‘Hey remember when we were on that hike and we were broken up and you had mentioned the name Isaac and how isn’t that the most beautiful thing, the best way to respond is laughing and rejoicing?” says Ray.
“He’s like, ‘I think that’s the name.’ I was like, ‘That’s the name,'” the proud mom tells PEOPLE. “I guess that name has been with us for a long time. We never knew we’d ever have to use it and here we are. He is a lot of laughing and a lot of rejoicing.”
While Isaac has only been in her life for three months, Ray says the transition has been almost seamless.
“I don’t want moms and dads to come for me everywhere, but he does sleep,” Ray jokes. “He’s just like me. He’s just like his mama. He loves to sleep and he loves to eat.”
Of course with the strike ending just as Isaac was born, Ray knew she’d have to share the exciting news with Blue Bloods executive producer Kevin Wade.
“I was like, ‘Just so you know, I’m not in New York at the moment,’ ” she remembers. “I was like, ‘Here’s the thing I got to let you know. I have a baby. He was just born and I’m not sure when we’re going to be back.'”
After she told Wade, Ray decided to call up her costars to tell them the good news.
“Of course I called Bridget right away and she was thrilled, Then I FaceTimed Donnie [Wahlberg] and I go, ‘We have something to tell you.’ He was like, ‘Are you pregnant?’ ” the star recounts, saying Wahlberg knew right away.
“He’s met Will [Estes] and Bridget and Donnie and Marisa [Ramirez] and Tom [Selleck], and yeah, he’s met everybody,” Ray says of her son. “So he’s already a real part of the family.”
For now, Ray is just excited to spend more time with her little guy.
“We’re just so focused on him right now,” she says. “And just showering him with love and trying to absorb every single moment we can of his just littleness, his little life.”