Please welcome our newest celebrity blogger, Ashley Jones!  Jones is known for her roles on True Blood and The Bold and the Beautiful. She has produced and starred in movies for Lifetime, as well as recurred and guest-starred on many television shows — most recently, CSI: Cyber and Criminal Minds. Jones, 39, also appeared in the 2015 comedy The Wedding Ringer.  She’ll return to her current role on General Hospital this summer, as well as in the independent ﬁlm Good After Bad.  Jones is married to Joel Henricks, and they are expecting their ﬁrst child together — a boy — any day now. The newest member of the family will join Henricks’ 4-year-old son, Huck.  You can follow Jones on her personal blog and Facebook, as well as Instagram and Twitter @AshleyAJones.  Do you ever wake up and have to process your life? Moments quickly ﬂash in your mind, while your brain takes inventory.  This happens to me lately. For just a few seconds, there’s a surreal sensation until my brain fully wakes up, remembering it’s all real. I’m pregnant!  A year and a half ago, I actually read this blog in bed at night, wondering when my time would come to start a family. Since then, I met my husband Joel, we got married and I became a stepmom to his son Huck as we merged our lives into one (insta)family. Now I’m about to deliver our baby boy. I guess you could say Joel and I knew what we wanted and went after it.  But even so, it’s a good amount of invited change for our mere mortal brains to process. I mean, not long ago, I only went to the grocery store when I was out of coffee, hot chocolate, string cheese and wine. Now, I’m stocking up on whole milk and carbs. My adorable extra bedroom/dressing room has been turned into Huck’s room, ﬁlled with Transformers and Legos. Saturdays at hot yoga have been replaced with soccer practice for toddlers.  I wouldn’t trade any of it. I feel like I’ve won the lottery.  Anyone who knows me understands how deeply I’ve wanted to find the right man, get married and have a baby. I’ve loved getting to play mothers on screen, but I was ready for the opportunity to play the real role. I remember getting a Christmas card with a beautiful baby on the front that read “Look what came from heaven in 2011.”  I just stared at the card, almost to the point of tears. Don’t get me wrong — I had a full, busy life. I just knew deep down, I was waiting for something more. I was waiting to meet my own family. As I watched friends have their second and third kids, I was handed doctor referrals for freezing my eggs.  But time would put a Band-Aid on those feelings and life would continue and get cluttered, until that proverbial biological clock started ticking again. It can get so loud it keeps you up at night. It’s instinctual, and there’s a reason for it. It can make you crazy if you let it, or it can keep you focused. It might have made me both at times, but mainly because I didn’t want to settle. I wanted to create a family with the love of my life.  So here I am, about to “have it all — all at once!” I’m so grateful and overjoyed. I wish I could stay in that mind space all the time. I’m embarrassed to say sometimes I worry I’m not totally present, appreciating all the answered prayers. My to-do list before the baby arrives keeps increasing no matter how many items I tackle.  RELATED: So Wild! Inside Ashley Jones’ Safari-Themed High Tea Baby Shower  I worry about pregnancy issues: Is my bathwater too warm? Is this coffee really decaf? As anyone who’s gone before me knows, there are plenty of pregnancy issues to ﬁll our minds — not to mention all the humorous tidbits that stem from pumped-up hormones!  (Please tell me this phenomenal ability to smell everything — mostly foul — within a mile radius wears off postpartum?! Joel is over my constant commentary about smells. And what about bleeding like an MMA ﬁghter after ﬂossing due to tender gums?)  It dawns on me that the anxiety from wanting a family has been replaced with anxiety from having one! I think about all the stress I put on myself a couple of years ago. If I could go back in time, I’d tell that girl, “It’s all good. You get the boy! You get the family! Worry less, enjoy the journey more.”  Joel reminds me that creating a family is a chaotic, beautiful mess. I’m not perfect and neither is he, but we’re in this together — all soon-to-be four of us.  Huck just asked me if the baby could come out of my belly tomorrow.  “I want him to come see me play soccer,” he says.  As I’m explaining that his little brother will be here soon, but probably not tomorrow, he jumps to his next thought.  “Do you know there will be three penises in this house?” he says, almost as a warning. I see the wheels turn in his little mind, taking inventory of his own life, just as mine did this very morning when I woke up. “And only one vagina … YOU will be the only vagina.”  Thank you for that clariﬁcation, Hucky. Is that God laughing, I hear? Just a little foreshadowing of life to come with my three boys.
In her first blog, the mom-to-be reflects on how far her life has come now that she's about to welcome a baby...