ith a hit show, great husbands, and babies along the way, it's no wonder that Suzi Entrata-Abrera and Lyn Ching-Pascual are having the time of their lives.

There's a hint of rain in the air; a gentle wind is blowing the sun is giving off a soft, white light. Yes, it's a nice and relaxing day, especially since we are in the company of Suzi Entrata-Abrera and Lyn Ching-Pascual, both being suited up for our pictorial.

It could very well have been a shoot for FHM, however. The two women are sexy as hell, their perfectly concave bellies protruding naughtily through their sheer, skimpy tops. Even more striking in person than they are on screen, these wacky Unang Hirit hosts make being pregnant look very, very, and hot. So hot, in fact, that car are slowing down to watch the photo shoot unfold, and the men in our group are finding it difficult to concentrate. Much tripping, ogling, and stuttering ensues.

“Preggies in bikinis,” jokes Lyn, stoking her creamy-white belly, where her daughter Alisa Gabriel has been gestating for the past seven months. She'll be Lyn's and husband Jap Pascual's first child, and even now anyone can see this baby will be their darling little princess, the very axis of their world.

“Medyo magsa-sale ang FHM nyan,” laughs Suzi, who's gone through this before with Leona, her one-year-old daughter with hubby Paolo Abrera. This is her second time around at natal bat, so she's giving her co-host Lyn invaluable advice about what she can expect, and what she'll be in for during and after Gabby's birth.

Similar life paths

More than just co-hosts on GMA-7's morning show Unang Hirit, Lyn and Suzi are friends, business partners, kumadres. They're so close, in fact, that their babies will be born a month apart.—Lyn's in November, and Suzi's in December.

They share many other similarities, some of which even they find eerie: Both were high-profile adventure seekers before they traded their vodkas and parachutes for vitamin supplements and nursing bras. They both waited for almost four years before their husbands formally proposed. Even the men in their lives have the same temperament—Paolo and Jap are patient, serene, cerebral men, both exact foils to Suzi and Lyn's crazy, madcap personalities.

As former co-host of S-Files with Paolo Bediones, Lyn has met many famous A-list celebs like Eddie Murphy, Owen Wilson, Phil Collins, and David Duchovny; she's gone to many places and seen many things.

“I'd been partying really hard all through my early to mid-twenties, to prove to myself that I could live it up, be this hip, happening party girl,” says Lyn. “But by the time I was 26, I'd grown tired of it. I was ready to settle down. Then I met Jap. It was the right time.”

They've been happily married for more than a year, with baby Alisa Gabriel on the way. Jap heads the supply management operations at Pascual Labs. “When we go out, there are times when people would point, pinch, or poke at me. And he tries to handle it as calmly as he can, although there are days when talagang nagagalt siya, especially now that I'm pregnant. Now, he tells people, OK, you can talk to my wife, but don't touch her! He's very protective of me. He's being sensitive for me because I can't be sensitive for myself.”

Suzi, on the other hand, hooked up with Paolo while they were hosting Gameplan years ago. “He'd never had a girlfriend before me,” she says wistfully. “He wore tight jeans, rode a motorcycle (he still does). Everyone though he was too cool to make for good husband material. But here he is, the better half of this relationship. He's such a wonderful father—not overly demonstrative, but the kind of man who'll put lotion on my feet at night, who'll gladly take care of sterilizing the bottles and taking out the diaper pail so I can focus on Leona, who'll tell me I'm beautiful even if I've only had four hours of sleep and I'm shuffling along like a fat old man, back bent and belly out, ‘Pare, mauna ka na pare. I'm coming, just let me hold onto this wall. Pare, I'll be fine.”

And as former Gameplan co-hosts and tri-athletes, Paolo and Suzi have climbed mountains, survived rafting in rough, wild waters, jumped off cliffs and planes, canopy-walked, dived, spelunked, sailed, biked through the wilderness. They've sprained everything there is to sprain, and more.

“We've had our fill of adventures,” she explains. “Lahat ng kuwento sa mundo, we can tell our kids and our grandkids. The only thing I really miss about my old life is watching movies. What was the last movie we watched? Troy ? No, it can't be Troy ? Oh no.”

Husband talk

Like all marriages, there will always be little problems along the way. But as long as there's love, there's never anything that compromise and cooperation can't fix.

“I hate it when Jap leaves the water running,” Lyn grouses. “Conserving water and energy is a big issue with me. But we're reaching a balance now. We're making an effort for each other, so when he's shaving and the faucet's open, I shout ‘Water!' and then he'll close it.”

“What is it with me not closing things?” Suzi wonders. “Paolo's that way too, but with doors naman.”

But when pressed to dish more dirt on their husbands, they can't think of anything else.

“I love him,” Suzi says. “He centers me and contains me and all my excess energy because he's so cerebral, mild-mannered, and patient. But I'm also glad that he gets angry every now and then. Like me, he's so still getting his bearings as a young parent.”

Lyn proffers, “I'm a better person because my husband made me so. He makes me feel so warm and nurtured that I've become more open to people. I'm not quite so aloof and standoffish as I used to be.”

Intimate details
And how's the sex, now that they're both into their third trimesters, and their larger proportions have made it more difficult to do their usual, uhm, maneuvers?

“Oh, pregnant sex nice,” sighs Lyn. “Sometimes Jap's afraid he might hit the baby, and I'm like, ‘Hello, how can you hit the baby?' But he'll still be careful, he won' be as vigorous. I tell him, ‘Pregnant or not, you're my husband and I'm you wife, so it' sonly right that we do this.' Besides, even if the belly sometimes gets in the way, there are other ways of pleasing each other, if you know what I mean.”

“When I was carrying Leona, I could've gone the whole nine months without sex at all,” Suzi supplies. “But my poor husband naman. Now, I'm more comfortable with it in my second pregnancy. But there's also the fact that I'm still nursing. When you're nursing, you have all this milk in your breasts. It's strange nga, your breasts, which you and your husband used for each other's pleasure, they become the source of nourishment for you child.”  

My mother, my self

Breastfeeding is very important to Suzi. She's also encouraging Lyn to take he same route, as not only does it promote weight loss, it also strengthens the bond between mother and child in every possible way.

“Though my mom handled all of us very well, she didn't get to breast-feed us because she was too busy running a business. Now, she's so bilib at the way I'm handling Leona, my pregnancy, my life in general. In a way, I think my idea of what motherhood should be is something that my own mother really looks up to.”

More than anything, being a mother has made Suzi appreciate her own mother even more. “Whenever we take Leona out, it's such a major production. She has more stuff than me and Paolo combined! And when I think about how there were four of us whom she had to take care of, whom she had to prepare for whenever we went out of town, I'm amazed. How did you do it, mom, how did you do it?”

Lyn's pregnancy has also helped bring her and her mother closer together. “She cooks for me every single day! When I come home at around 10 a.m. from Unang Hirit, I got to sleep, then watch Oprah, and then eat the lunch that my mom's made for me—brown rice and vegetables, walang palya. I'm thankful that she loves taking care of me like this.”

Pass the carrot-cake, hold the mint

While Lyn tries to maintain her healthy diet of brown rice and vegetables, there's one thing she just can't resist: sweets.

“I have this terrible sweet tooth—when I see something, I have to have it talaga. Like the carrot cake at Figaro's. Oh, my God! I love it! It melts in your mouth, dumederetso to your palate! I also like magula or malaka or whatever. Basta you can only find it in Greenhills; it's like Ice Monster but better. It has gelatin, the crunchy kind, with fruits and lots of milk and sugar.

“But too much sugar is bad for the baby. Rome Kanapi, our Lamaze instructor, says that it goes directly into your baby's bloodstream, so sya ang tumataba, hindi masyado ikaw. He tells me I'll have plenty of time to make the baby fat when she's out na, but not while in because I'll have difficulty giving birth to her if she's too big.

Lyn's also had her arroz caldo phase, but now the very though of it makes her gag. “After a few days of eating just that, I got so sick of it that even until now when I smell it, I'm like, “Aaargh, ayaw ko na!'”

But inspite of all these cravings and aversions, Lyn's having an easy time with Alisa Gabriel.

“Oh my God, I'm enjoying myself. I think I'm one of the luckiest pregnant women in the world. Never ako nagkaproblema with morning sickness. I was never so lethargic that I had to be dragged off the bed, although my husband has to push me off because it's so hard to move now that I'm really, really big. He has to help me a little bit, although bawal yun according to Lamaze instructor.”

This being Suzi's second pregnancy, you'd think she'd have it easier this time around. But no. “For the first time, I've been feeling dizzy,” she shares. “I never had this with Leona before. Up to now, sometimes I gag a little bit, but nothing really comes out or anything. There are certain sights and smells that trigger it, like fast food, leafy green, garlic, bathroom smells, the smell of our (infamous) canteen. I also can't stand mint, so some relatives from the US had to send us cinnamon-flavored toothpaste, or I'd buy Happee, that local toothpaste for kids, with strawberry flavors and such.”

It's all about Leona

But Suzi knows it's all worth it because this baby is going to bring them just as much joy as he Ate Leona. When she talks about Leona, she gushes. Her eyes brighten, her voice shakes, every fiber of her body is electric, alive.

“She just turned one last July 24, now she's learned how to walk, and she's walking all over the place,” Suzi beams. “Hay, she's so pilya! She does all these things with her yaya and her daddy. Touch your nose, Leona, where's your right, where's your left, etc. But when I'm the one asking, she refuses to do it. As in refuses!

“And we're having trouble feeding her. She'll only eat around four or five teaspoons of her blundered food a day, that's it. Eh, she's walking now, so she's also losing weight.” Worried, Suzi's smooth brow furrows for the first time today. “But Paolo is helping me with it, so we'll get through it.”

When asked to express how she feels about her daughter, Suzi verily becomes a poet. “Leona changed everything, and that's not a bad thing. These are the simplest joys—just having her in the room, giving her a bath, playing tag team with your husband in sucking out her sipon with the aspirator… these are just chores if you think about it, but these are precious. You'll never have these again with your baby when she grows up.”

Lyn also expecting that her child will change her, just as much as her marriage to Jap is changing her. “It's a good feeling, having someone inside of you who'll love you unconditionally. I'm more spiritual now, and so is Jappy.”

Suzi agrees. “These are the days we live for.” - -