JOSIE'S JOY

Actress Josie Bissett and husband Rob Estes celebrate her healthy pregnancy. By Michele Kort

IF EVER A BABY WAS MUCH WANTED, it's Mason Estes, due to arrive July 23. Mom (and cover model) Josie Bissett, an actress best known for her role as Jane Mancini on "Melrose Place," suffered a miscarriage and then a bout of infertility before baby Mason settled in. Now that she's finally fulfilling her dream, the pregnancy has been everything Bissett hoped for.
     "I'm just loving it," says the 28-year-old Bissett. "It's the most amazing thing I've ever experienced." Except for two weeks during her third month when she had a splitting headache that wouldn't quit (some neck therapy finally helped), she's feeling great, both physically and emotionally. "I have my ups and downs emotionally, but they're not controlling me," she says. "It's all deal-able. I'm more joyful about being pregnant than anything."
     Bissett, who has been modeling since age 12 and acting since she was 17, hasn't even worried about losing the slim figure that's the stock-in-trade of her profession. She's kept up a moderate exercise schedule of light weight training, walking and, in her final trimester, prenatal yoga at Yoga Works in Santa Monica, Calif. She's also following a healthful pregnancy diet plan, without overeating.
     "But I'm not going to get on a scale," she laughs. "They weigh me at the doctor's, and I don't look. I've heard that when you're used to weighing a certain amount and then you see an extra 30 or 40 pounds on the scale, it's kind of a weird shock - even though it's OK to weigh more! What's important is that I'm healthy and that the baby's healthy."
     Bissett's perspective on pregnancy might partially reflect how difficult it was for her and her husband, hunky actor Rob Estes - the former star of television's "Silk Stalkings" and, for the past three seasons, Kyle McBride on "Melrose" - to conceive. In 1997, right around the time Bissett decided to take a leave from "Melrose Place," where she'd been the long-suffering wife of caddish doctor Michael Mancini for five seasons, she found herself happily pregnant.
     Her subsequent miscarriage was devastating ("you so quickly plan a baby into your life"), but even more frustrating was her failure to get pregnant again. After various unsuccessful fertility treatments, doctors finally gave the couple a "recurring-miscarriage panel" of blood tests and learned that Bissett lacked a critical "blocking" antibody that protects a new fetus from rejection. It took only one protective injection of her husband's white blood cells to ensure their next pregnancy's success.
     By that time, Bissett had enjoyed taking time off to relax, study art and photography, and star in a couple of TV movies, while Estes romanced Heather Locklear's character on "Melrose." Last summer, Bissett was invited to rejoin the show, and in this past season - the show's last - she even got to have a little on-screen romance of her own with her hubby.
     Estes is thrilled with his wife's pregnancy. "Rob loves to feel the baby move, and he loves watching me grow," says Bissett. "He always says I'm in all my glory."
     The couple plans to raise Mason in Los Angeles, where Bissett will initially focus on motherhood and occasional modeling (she's currently a new "face" for Neutrogena cosmetics). "I do love to work and have a career, but I think I'm a born mother," she says. "I'm going to try to balance both." The Bissett-Estes clan might eventually end up in Seattle, where Bissett's close-knit family lives.
     Recently, Bissett was able to watch her sister give birth. "It was so amazing," she says. "I was positive it was going to be a girl - and it was a boy." Despite the delight of that gender surprise, Bissett's glad she learned her own baby's sex beforehand. "I talk to him, I say his name, I picture him. I picture little-boy energy running around the house. I feel like it prepares me and helps me bond with him before he's even here."
     "So I love knowing," she concludes. "But like I said, it's amazing either way."

Michele Kort is a Los Angeles-based free-lance writer who is working on a biography of singer-songwriter Laura Nyro.