CNN's Kasie Hunt Expecting Second Baby, a Daughter, One Year After Brain Surgery: 'Grateful'

Courtesy of Kasie Hunt

Kasie Hunt has some joyful news to celebrate this holiday season.

The CNN anchor and chief national affairs analyst, 37, is pregnant, expecting her second baby, a daughter, with husband Matthew Mario Rivera, a rep for Hunt shares exclusively with PEOPLE.

"I'm so excited to share that we are having a baby girl, due in early March," Hunt tells PEOPLE in a statement.

Hunt and Rivera are already parents to 3-year-old son Mars Hunt, who "can't wait to be a big brother," the journalist says.

"For Halloween, he insisted that the baby have her own pumpkin. When we were decorating for Christmas, he asked me to put up a stocking for 'baby sister,' " she adds.

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Courtesy of Kasie Hunt

RELATED: CNN's Kasie Hunt Says She's 'Completely Healthy' 1 Year Since Brain Surgery: 'I Have Learned So Much'

The exciting news comes just over one year after Hunt had surgery to remove a brain tumor.

Hunt revealed to PEOPLE last October that she underwent a four-hour operation that month to remove a benign brain tumor. Hunt became aware of her diagnosis around the same time she began her role at CNN in August 2021.

"We are thrilled to be able to celebrate this after the health trials I had over the past year," says Hunt. "Expanding the love in our lives is the perfect way to keep healing."

"We have so much to be grateful for this holiday season," she adds.

Courtesy of Kasie Hunt

In October, Hunt posted a lengthy message via Twitter in which she looked back on her health journey, writing, "Today I am humbled to be able to say I am completely healthy and can physically live my life as though it never happened."

She expressed, however, that her journey to get to that point was one she never imagined. "I had [spent] weeks planning what life would look like for my loved ones — my then 2-year-old son — without me in it," Hunt wrote.

"It's not an experience I would wish on anyone. But I have to tell you — I am so grateful now to understand the things I was forced to grapple with because of the tumor growing in my head," she added alongside a photo of her reading to her son Mars.

She added in her Twitter message: "Most people aren't forced to grapple with the real possibility they'll be gone when they are still otherwise young and healthy — when they still have most of their expected lives left to live."

Hunt said she thought about the future of her son and whether or not she could give him a sibling as well as the well-being of her husband and her parents.

"It's those things — showing up, every day, in big but mostly in small ways — for the people I love — that I too often sacrificed in my life without even truly grappling with or understanding what I was giving up," she said, in part. "I don't live my life that way any more. I refuse to. And I am just so grateful to God and to everyone in my life who carried me through this trial and brought me to this changed place."