Pregnant Eva Amurri Martino Opens Up About the Reason She Previously Had Not Wanted a Third Baby
Eva Amurri Martino wasn’t initially sure she wanted to expand her family again, but she’s so glad it’s happening now thanks to husband Kyle Martino‘s dedication.
In a Wednesday post on her blog Happily Eva After, the actress and soon-to-be mom of three, 34, explained that she “fully believed” she was done having kids until a conversation over dinner this past February with her husband led the couple to embrace the idea of giving a sibling to their son Major James, 2½, and daughter Marlowe Mae, 5.
“He looked at me with the weirdest look on his face, and I pushed him to find out what he was thinking … finally he spilled the beans: ‘I think I want to go for a third,’ ” she wrote. “I was SHOCKED. Shocked. He then launched into an entire campaign for why we should do it! I just sat back and listened, and a lot of it made perfect sense to me.”
Amurri Martino candidly went on to share that “one of the biggest things” she and the NBC Sports analyst, 38, “have had to work on in our marriage is our different views of gender roles when it pertains to parenting,” saying Martino “was involved the bare minimum in helping me with the kids” for years, “even though I was working full time.”
“A lot of this had to do with his upbringing, and some of it was other factors — but it took a lot of therapy for us to get on the same page and work through how our own backgrounds lead to a lot of clashes in this department,” she said, admitting, “I was frustrated and resentful, and quite honestly, exhausted. We’ve come a long way, but we still continue to work on this dynamic in our relationship.”
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Amurri Martino explained that “the idea of more than two always seemed completely overwhelming to me, especially during the times where Kyle and I were in pretty intensive therapy together,” since she “shouldered a lot of the child-rearing in the early years with the kids.”
“One of the things Kyle was telling me at dinner was how much he wanted to ‘redo’ those years that he missed with our other two kids, and how much more he wanted to be there for me with a third child,” she continued. “I was really moved by this point, since there were parts about Major’s babyhood that I also really felt that I ‘missed’ due to my PPD and PTSD.”
“If I was being honest with myself, I had always kind of wished for a do-over during that time with my ‘last child,’ ” Amurri Martino said. “After doing so much work on myself the past couple of years, the idea of being able to have a different experience as a mom the third time around was definitely appealing to me.”
The star announced her pregnancy on Sept. 8 — sharing the news in a surprise video featuring her husband and kids — and, one week later, revealed the baby on the way is a boy.
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And although the experience of Martino floating the idea of a third baby by her made her feel “touched, terrified and emotional all at the same time,” Amurri Martino “wasn’t convinced” and went back and forth about the idea until she decided to let fate step in and make the decision for them.
“Before we left for Italy in June, I told Kyle I was ready to ‘open the door’ to a third child and see what happened (no intense ‘trying’) but that if I wasn’t pregnant by the end of the winter Holiday season, we would move forward with closing the door for good,” she wrote in her Wednesday post.
“We left on our trip … and I got pregnant immediately,” she continued. “I have never gotten pregnant that easily or that fast ever — and to be honest, it was exactly the sign I needed that this child was always meant to be a part of our family.”
“There is one thing that my journey to motherhood has taught me for sure, though, which is that you are given the children you were always meant to have … exactly when you are meant to have them,” Amurri Martino said. “I realized that I was thinking about it so much that I was forgetting the most important thing: It isn’t up to me!”
