For the TIME staff members reporting this week's cover story, the assignment proved not only stimulating but joyful. Their sources proved eager to talk about everything from prenatal exercise programs to amniocentesis. As New York Correspondent Barbara Dolan discovered, "Almost anyone you ask knows two or three women over 30 who are having, or have recently had, a baby. One woman I spoke with had 22 pregnant friends." Boston Correspondent Joelle Attinger, 30, found a veritable chorus line of cooperative sources in the newsroom of Boston's television station WCVB-TV, where eleven staff members, including Anchorwoman Natalie Jacobson, gave birth last year. "Their candor was striking," says Attinger. "Jacobson acknowledged the difficulties of balancing family and work and concluded that she's 'not cheating anyone.' As one who hopes to follow her example, I found it very reassuring."

Los Angeles Correspondent Alessandra Stanley, who interviewed a dozen or so expectant actresses, found normally high-pressured and publicity-wise film stars surprisingly serene and open. "Jaclyn Smith is so into pregnancy and motherhood, I felt like I was talking to Melanie Wilkes in Gone With the Wind," says Stanley. "And after almost every interview, the mother-to-be would turn to me and ask, 'But when are you planning to have a baby?' " Chicago's Bonnie Bell had a ready answer for that one: "I just did." Bell, 36, gave birth to her first child last June. She confirms that "pregnancy and childbirth in our age group provide an instant camaraderie with other women." The cover story was written by Associate Editor J. D. Reed, assisted by Reporter-Researcher Georgia Harbison.

Photography posed its own special problems. The flying stork-steed that appears on page 53, designed by Artist Mari Kaestle in foam rubber and feathers, was attached to an especially sturdy metal stand so pregnant Model Lori Coen could perch in perfect security. As for the cover image itself, after gallantly twirling and bouncing through two studio sessions, Jaclyn Smith warned Photographer Raul Vega--facetiously, of course,

"One more bounce and I'm going to go into labor right here." As it was, there were enough bounces to produce an expressive portrait of an exuberant mother-to-be.

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