B&B’s Jacqueline MacInnes Wood Reveals How Her Baby Boy Has Changed Her Life (EXCLUSIVE)
Just four days before the March 4 delivery of her son, Rise Harlen Ruspoli, THE BOLD & THE BEAUTIFUL’s Jacqueline MacInnes Wood (Steffy) was dancing like a crazy woman on the CBS rooftop, willing her overdue baby to come out and play. “I must have been quite the hoot for people in the offices,” the actress joked to Soaps In Depth. “A pregnant woman literally trying to dance her baby out.”
Rise, now five months old, still loves to move and groove, and motion is sometimes the only thing that appeases him, admitted the actress. “My husband [Elan] tells me, ‘You did this to yourself, because you were dancing the entire time you were pregnant!’”
The baby may have inherited his mom’s dance moves in utero, but physically, he takes after his Daddy. “I feel as though I gave birth to my husband,” Wood laughed. “He has Elan’s eyes, which are very distinct, but he has my nose. And there’s a dimple on his chin, which we actually think he got from my mom.”
Wood tried not to let Hope’s tragic storyline affect her too much during her final stages of pregnancy. “The funeral [for Beth] was terrible, but it’s almost as if my body would not allow me to access that too much. I was able to separate it.” (Photo Credit: Howard Wise/jpistudios.com)
Wood has been slaying motherhood judging by the high-style Instagram photos she occasionally posts with her son, but on the flipside, she admits she’s as dazed and confused (and covered in spit-up) as any new mother.
“Oh my gosh, of course,” she said. “I’m figuring it all out. Lately, he has me up every hour at night.” When friends recently asked Wood what having an infant is really like, she responded with an apt metaphor. “I said, ‘It’s like when you have a night of drinking and you go home and then you wake up two hours later in a cold sweat, like, “Where am I? What’s happening?” That’s really what it’s like!’”
The actress jokes that being a onetime party girl of sorts has prepared her well for the sleep-deprived challenges of motherhood. “Thanks to my jet-setting ways, I’m like, ‘Okay, I can do this,’” she laughed. Wood also has plenty of help from her mother, Sandy, who lives nearby, as well as her hands-on hubby, who has taken to parenting with aplomb. “He’s been absolutely wonderful,” said Wood. “Watching him cuddle up with Rise is such a beautiful sight. I’m very lucky.”
A self-described former tomboy, Wood admitted she was hoping for a son, even though she didn’t grow up among brothers. “I don’t necessarily know what to expect with a boy, but I’m very excited about it, and I feel like he’s going to bring me back to my own childhood.”
Wood knows she’s been lucky over these first few months to have escaped colic with Rise, who has a fairly zen personality. “He’s really chill,” she said. “He laughs and smiles a lot, and is very observant. He can definitely sit with himself, taking everything in or talking to himself. He already seems so independent.” The adorable baby is also shaping up to be a little linebacker! “He’s quite big,” Wood reported. “At 13 weeks, he was already in nine-month clothing!”
In the few short months since Rise has been in her life, the actress says she’s changed significantly. Her priorities, for starters, have come into laser-sharp focus. “He’s taught me patience, which I love.” She’s also learned to be completely present, be it with him or anyone else. “I’ve taken a digital detox, because I don’t like having the phone around him a lot,” she said. “If I go out to dinner with my husband or friends, I try to be really there with them since that time is rare. It’s definitely taught me to be more in the moment.”
Though she’s already sporting bikinis again on B&B, Wood says fitness, too, has become more catch-as-catch-can. “I have a little gym set up in my back yard, so I bring Rise outside and let him lay on his play mat while I get in some squats. He loves watching me exercise, so it actually motivates me to do it. It’s definitely not how it used to be, but I’m making it work!”
For more from your favorite B&B stars, keep reading the CBS edition of Soaps In Depth magazine.
This story originally appeared in our print magazine
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