In Virgin River, there are certain truisms: everyone hangs out at Jack’s bar,

the small town takes care of its own, and Charmaine is always pregnant.

Not really, but it certainly feels that way. When Charmaine (Lauren Hammersley)

announced that she was pregnant at the end of season 1 of the Netflix series, no one could have imagined that it would take until the end of season 5 for her to finally give birth. But time moves a little slower in Virgin River.

Still, showrunner Patrick Sean Smith knows how ludicrous it might have seemed to viewers — and couldn’t resist poking fun at it in the season 5 Christmas episodes. “I feel like I’ve been pregnant for years,” she tells Mel (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Jack (Martin Henderson). Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

“We could not avoid that one,” Smith tells EW. “As we were shooting season 5 and season 4 came out, people started to catch up on the very slow timeline of the series. And that was through pregnant women and through children, because both had their natural course. It’s hard to hide that.”

As Smith and the writing team were planning season 5, they knew they wanted Charmaine’s due date to finally arrive — but it was a matter of figuring out where to put the long-awaited birth. “I tried for part one, but it felt too soon and we didn’t have the real estate for it,” he says. “But it also felt like a great holiday gift to the fans to be like, ‘And Charmaine has finally had a baby after four seasons.’ Lauren, who’s hilarious, posted on Instagram, ‘In two days, I’m going to give birth to two five-year-olds.’”

Hammersley has been nothing but good-natured about having to wear a fake pregnant belly for most of her time on Virgin River, but Smith says the actress was also grateful to have the chance to make a tongue-in-cheek reference to it within the show. “She loved it,” he adds. “She was such a trooper. She and Tim [Matheson] and Alex had a lot of fun shooting the delivery scene. It felt right, and I’m glad she finally got to have those babies.”