After years of infertility issues, actress Camille Guaty, best known for her roles on Prison Break and Scorpion, is expecting a baby with husband Sy Rhys Kaye, a British songwriter and composer.

Guaty, who was born in Sunnyvale, California, is of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. Her mother's family is originally from Spain. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and Boston University.

“The day the nurse called to tell me I was pregnant, I burst out crying!” the 43-year-old told PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. “I made her say it to me four or five times. I feel so grateful now and can’t wait to meet our son.”

Guaty has struggled with infertility for the past six years. Initially, she attempted to get pregnant naturally with her husband. After a year, Guaty and Kaye, 39, decided to seek out an in-vitro fertilization clinic, where she was informed that her ovarian reserve was “equivalent to that of a 50-year-old.”

“You never think this is going to be your story,” she said. “Women come up to me and say, ‘If you’re 43 and pregnant, I have plenty of time!’ I just want to say, ‘It didn’t happen the way you think it did.'”

The couple endured five failed rounds of IVF and also tried intrauterine insemination, in which sperm is directly placed into the uterus, to no avail. After a sixth round of IVF with a New York doctor, Guaty began to lose hope. “I thought he was the end-all, be-all,” she said. “But then I took such a nosedive in my fertility in those three months that he was like, ‘I don’t know what happened!’ My fertility was pretty much nonexistent.”

Last year, Guaty and Kaye began looking at the possibility of using an egg donor. “I honestly had a difficult time wrapping my mind around this choice,” she said. “Just a couple of years ago, the idea of another woman’s egg in my body was unfathomable.”

The actress eventually found a donor through an “amazing IVF clinic in Mexico.” Her husband flew to Mexico to deposit his sperm, but the process was unsuccessful due to an error on the donor’s part. The couple was left “tapped out” emotionally and financially, and although Kaye was willing to try again with a new egg donor, Guaty began considering adoption.

“After we found a second egg donor, we were told she could only give us two eggs — and then only one embryo matured. That’s when I told my husband, ‘I can’t do this. It’s too much pressure,” she said. Just as they were about to give up hope, they received a call informing Guaty that she was pregnant.

“When we both let go of our expectations of what parenthood was supposed to be, our pregnancy happened with that one golden egg,” she said. “I had such faith that I was going to be a mother. I didn’t know how it was going to turn out but, I realized being a mother means nurturing a child in an environment that will help them grow and flourish. That’s a family.”

Last year, the actress, who started raising money and awareness for underprivileged foster-children in 2016, co-founded Foster a Dream, a non-profit that works with the Department of Children and Family Services to better the lives of foster children. Among the organization's achievements, Guaty along with co-founder Katie Jordan, and Carla Gonzalez of the Department of Children and Family Services, have launched a successful toy drive, which reaches hundreds of children in Los Angeles County during the holiday season. Now, she hopes her story of struggling with infertility will inspire other women.

“What a gift [our egg donor] gave us. Let’s celebrate that there was a person so selfless and able to give us this opportunity,” she said. “It’s something we don’t talk about. I want to inspire women to start speaking out about their fertility challenges. I want people to know that this is my journey. [Being open] erases the shame and stigma and has made me feel more confident.”

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Despite the obstacles and the heartache, the couple is thankful for their chance to be parents. “While this journey has felt endless, and I’ve been in the depths of despair, I feel so grateful now,” Guaty said. “Through everything, Sy and I became a stronger couple, and we know our second child is going to come from the foster system. We’re going to have a really cool family.”