UsMagazine.com: CSI: Miami's Emily Procter Had No Idea She Was Pregnant!

CSI: Miami's Emily Procter Had No Idea She Was Pregnant!

After years of trying to conceive a child, CSI: Miami's Emily Procter dreamed of the day she would finally become a mother -- literally!

"I'm so excited! I actually had no idea that I was pregnant, and in
the middle of the night I had this dream," Procter, 41, tells UsMagazine.com. "There was this old woman, and she said, 'Honey, you're pregnant!' And I said, 'No, I'm not. There's no way.'"

Procter took the dream as a sign and woke up in the middle of the night to take a pregnancy test.

"I thought that dream was so bizarre, and when it was positive, of course I told my boyfriend [musician Paul Bryan]," the Palmer's spokeswoman says. "We were like, 'Wow! That is unbelievable.'"

Since then, the actress -- who is due in December -- says her CSI: Miami costars have already begun offering advice to the first-time parents.

"It’s probably 90 percent men [on set], and I expected them to be weird about it, and they have been so sweet," she tells Us.
"I get guys coming in saying, 'These are my daughter's favorite
onesies,' and 'My son loves this rattle' or 'This works really well for
my family.' These big burly guys who could walk on fire and not feel it
are like, 'Let me get you a chair. Are you thirsty? Are you drinking
enough water?'"

And as she preps for her baby's arrival, Procter is keeping the details of her baby's sex mum -- for now, anyway.

"We have a couple of names picked out," she teases. "We are going to see. It's all in negotiation."

'CSI: Miami': Emily Procter dreamed of having a baby ... literally

Sitting on the laboratory set of CBS' "CSI: Miami," currently airing its 9th season on Sundays, Emily Procter, 42, who plays CSI Calleigh Duquesne, wonders if the experience of

having her first baby, due in mid-December, will be all that unfamiliar.

"It's funny," she tells Zap2it, munching on cake from the show's 200th-episode party earlier in the day, "I'll be curious to see how different it is from Season One of an hour-long drama, because you don't sleep in Season One.

"I remember walking around in a stupor and thinking, 'This is what it must be like to be a new parent.' Because you're sleeping three, four hours a night. You're on your feet; you have to be on. You're getting up when it's dark and coming home when it's dark.

"I'll be curious to see how different it is. Everybody's like, 'Are you ready to get up at five o'clock in the morning?' I'm like, 'I get up at five o'clock in the morning now. Yeah, I'm ready.'"

Now that her pregnancy is in its final trimester, Procter has been dealing with some practical problems.

"It's the wildest thing," she says, looking down at her belly. "You really think this can't stretch any more, and then it does. Then it does. It's like being a bug on its back. You get into a position where you think, 'I can't get up. I really can't get up.'

"Your middle doesn't work. It used to be people could pull me from the side, now they've got

to come from the front, because even off to the side, all I do is topple over."

While Procter is pregnant, Duquesne is not, and the actress likes it that way.

"We had talked about it," she says, " and I was really advocating for it being written in. Now, I have to say, it was the absolute right decision, and I love it. I don't work nearly the hours that I did. I sit down a lot."

Because she's not in the field processing evidence, Procter does a lot of scenes in which she's talking to witnesses or suspects, and that has challenges of its own.

"I'm having that problem with my memory," she says, "that sometimes pregnancy brings on. I'm looking at people, and I'm thinking, 'God, I hope they say something that triggers what I'm supposed to ask them next.'

"I think I take a lot of long, extra pauses, where I stare meaningfully at people and go, 'Hmmm.' I'm really seething this season. It's about the seethe and trying to remember what I'm supposed

to say."

Asked whether she ever feels left out of the action, Procter says, "I think initially my ego was bruised a little bit, because I'm like, 'I'm not out there with everyone.' I got over it. My third day of sleep when people were just stumbling around, I'm like, 'I don't have to be here.'"

Apparently, Procter had an early alert for pregnancy from an unusual source.

"I'd had a dream that I was pregnant," Procter says, "and I got up in the middle of the night and took a pregnancy test. It was a bizarre thing. A nurse was in my dream, and she said, 'You're pregnant.' I said, 'Oh, no, I'm not pregnant.' She said, 'Yes, you are.' I said, 'How come nobody's told me?' She said, 'It's too soon.'

"I woke up, and I thought, 'That's a very strange dream.' I happened to have a pregnancy test, and I went and took it, and it was positive. And I thought, 'I'm so glad I took that, because we work with smoke ...'

"It had been a couple of weeks, but I thought, 'I don't know what's up, but something's up. I'm not going to worry about it, because I know I'm not pregnant.' And, I was."

Fortunately for Procter, she's not having to spend a lot of her time shopping for the baby.

"My mom," she says, "for all my teasing her about saving everything, she saved all my clothes, so I have a ton of clothes. And I have a couple of friends who sent me giant boxes of hand-me-downs."

original link

'CSI: Miami': Emily Procter dreamed of having a baby ... literally

Sitting on the laboratory set of CBS' "CSI: Miami," currently airing its 9th season on Sundays, Emily Procter,
42, who plays CSI Calleigh Duquesne, wonders if the experience of
having her first baby, due in mid-December, will be all that unfamiliar.

Inside Stars' Favorite Rooms: Emily Procter's living room

Inside Stars' Favorite Rooms:

EMILY'S LIVING ROOM

>Mom-to-be Emily Procter has a secret talent: She's an avid interior designer! The North

Carolina native even added a measured dose of southern comfort with

plush pillows and fresh flowers to her otherwise sleek white space. "I

love a good old-fashioned formal living room," says the CSI: Miami star.

"CSI: Miami" Star Emily Proctor Opens Up About Expecting Her First Child

In an exclusive Modernmom interview with Emily Proctor, the "CSI: Miami"

star revealed the scoop about being pregnant for the first time (her
baby is due in December!) and what kind of mommy she hopes to be. She is
so sweet and we have a hunch she'll be a great mommy!

sheknows.com: Emily Procter shares pregnancy secrets

Emily Procter shares pregnancy secrets

SheKnows: Being a celebrity, the world wants to know
about your pregnancy. Is it a challenge for you to keep it still
between you and this little baby that’s growing inside you or are you
more than willing to share it with the world?  

Emily Procter: It was one of those things where I
wanted to see how the pregnancy progressed before I made any sort of
announcement. I was home for the summer and I kept going places and
hearing from people, "Oh my gosh, I heard you’re pregnant." [Laughs] What? Apparently, my dad took it upon himself to let the world know he was going to be a grandfather finally. [Laughs]
That’s how that turned out. It’s been fine. My job prepared me nicely
for having people come up and randomly touch me because that’s what
happens all the time. People just come up and touch my sweater or fix my
hair. Nobody ever says, "Here I come, I’m going to touch you!" Now,
everyone’s touching my belly. I’m completely used to it. It feels normal
to me.

Southern mothering to Southern California

SheKnows: What parts of your childhood, or how you were raised, do you seek to replicate as a mother yourself?

Emily Procter: I hope to teach my child to toilet paper as many houses as possible [laughs].
Seriously, one thing I’m going to miss in Los Angeles versus North
Carolina is that it is so much bigger here. I’m looking forward to
seeing how I will handle that. One thing I love about being in Los
Angeles is there are so many wonderful parks. There are great places to
play outside. That was not available to us as a child, because it would
get cold. At a certain point, you didn’t play outside because it was
winter. Parts of my childhood I’d like to recreate for my child? I don’t
know. I feel in a lot of ways I’m still living the way my family raised
me. I’m a big holiday person. I’m one of those people who is decorating
for Halloween the first day of October [laughs]. I’m just
going to do a lot of the same things my mom did with me. My parents were
really good at showing us where the origins of things were. We went to a
dairy farm, things like that.

SheKnows: In the last couple of years, there’s been a
real trend for the press to cover celebrity babies, almost like the
babies of celebrities become celebrities. Are you ready for that? Or,
are you seeking to be more of a shielding mother to keep the press away
from your little one?

Emily Procter: The one thing I’ve noticed about
having my job, for myself, is that I always felt that if I behaved
normally and acted the same, people are going to treat me the same. I
think it worked. I think with a child, I’m already in severe danger of
being overprotective. I would have done that anyway. I hope I will give
my child the freedom to not be that protective of them constantly. It’s
just going to be life as normal for us. That’s what I hope, anyway [laughs].

Procter and the work-motherhood balance

SheKnows: Such an issue for women all over the world, how do you seek to balance your career and motherhood?

Emily Procter: One thing I think that is nice about
being an older mom is that my career is established enough that
motherhood is going to step up and take the primary role. I feel very
thankful for that. I’m also in a position that the people that I work
with are parents to children too. They’ve already been wonderful with me
being pregnant. It’s going to be great. I’m just going to take the baby
to work. That’s my plan.

SheKnows: CSI: Miami is premiering October 3, how’s the shoot been while pregnant?

Emily Procter: It’s been great for me. In every scene, I’m just sitting in a chair [laughs]! You don’t understand, this is my favorite season so far.

SheKnows: Are they going to write that into your
storyline, or are you just sitting at tables and walking around holding a
folder over your belly?

Emily Procter: [Laughs] The good news, I’m
due anytime before Christmas. They’ve been very nice about it thus far,
but I have a feeling that people are going to be tapping their watch,
looking at me, ready for me to go to the gym in February. "Alright, you
don’t get to sit down anymore."

SheKnows: Are you going to take any time off after having the baby?

Emily Procter: I’m going to try not to; I’m going to try to not miss an episode. I’m not pulling my weight this year, I’m really not [laughs]. I’m surprised when they pay me.