Just weeks after giving birth to her second son, Kim Raver was back on the set of the NBC show Lipstick Jungle, shooting a racy sex scene on a dining table. After her character, Nico, the editor of a fashion magazine, and a much younger lover, played by Robert Buckley, went at it for a while, the director yelled, "Cut!" and everyone walked away. Raver, however, just lay there, she recalls, like "a bug stuck on my back. I had no stomach strength. And I'd had a C-section, so it was even worse!" Buckley had to help her up.
In a way, every woman returning to work after having a baby can relate to that moment: the pressure to perform, the vulnerability, the flash of embarrassment. But rather than struggle with the emotional mishmash, Raver sank her teeth right in. "It was important to me to experience both nursing Leo and recovering from having him," says the 40-year-old actress, whose older child, Luke, is 6. "I'd be in a fitting trying to squeeze into clothes, and I'd think, I'm not doing this. There's going to be more milk, and healthier milk, if I'm eating well, and I'm already stressed out because of my work level. So instead of dieting, Raver's refrain to craft services became "Get me a really yummy, highly caloric steak!"
Granted, Raver, who appeared on Third Watch and 24 before Lipstick Jungle, had genetics and an accommodating director on her side. She's tall, naturally lean, and lost much of the pregnancy weight right after delivering Leo, who is now a year old. The show's crew built him a nursery, paused production for feeding sessions, and played up Raver's new-and-improved cleavage in her many make-out scenes (her character is in a passionless marriage and having a torrid affair). But Raver, tired and hormonal, still had to work 17-hour days. At 5 a.m., she'd leave the downtown Manhattan apartment she shares with her husband (French filmmaker Manuel Boyer) and sons to get to the Brooklyn set, return well after midnight, and wake with her boys a few hours later. "I remember crying at one photo shoot because I couldn't get into the dresses I'd normally fit into," she says. "Brooke [Shields, her costar] was so lovely. She reminded me that [this period is just] a short window."
When Leo was 8 months old, Raver stopped nursing and was ready to lace up her sneakers. Now she exercises with trainer David Kirsch and keeps his DVDs in her apartment, in her dressing room, and at her weekend house in Bridgehampton, New York, "so I have no excuses." But her favorite way to break a sweat is outdoors, with Luke. One day this past summer, she told him, "I'll get my run in while you learn to ride your bike without training wheels." They went on a long ride. "He'd get it, so I'd sprint; then he'd stop, so I'd slow down. Then he'd get it, and I'd sprint. It was an amazing workout."
It was also precious time with her firstborn—something Raver carves out every chance she gets. Weekends at the beach with her family are sacred and low-key, she says: "I don't really want a social life." The one extracurricular role she's taken on is as spokesperson for the Volvic "Drink 1, Give 10" campaign, which helps UNICEF provide clean, potable water to children in Ethiopia.
Like her sons, Raver and her older sister, Cybele, grew up in Manhattan—but with a magical twist: When she was 6, they were spotted in a department store and cast on Sesame Street. She was on the show for three years. "It paid for private school," says Raver, whose single mom struggled at times to make ends meet. "There was this amazing greenroom. The door to the soundstage had the words ONE, TWO, THREE, OPEN SESAME! on it."
Raver's message to other new moms is just as simple. Remember to love the body you're in after having a baby," she says. "You're not sleeping. You're juggling one, two, or three kids. If it's emotionally satisfying at three or four in the morning, when the baby won't go back to sleep, have a piece of chocolate! While you nurture your baby, it's important to nurture yourself."
