Golden Globe and Emmy winning actor Alec Baldwin is expecting a third child with his wife Hilaria Thomas. The news was initially released by Hilaria in an Instagram post at around 3 p.m. on March 9; Baldwin then posted the image and information.
“Ireland, Carmen, Rafael , Alec, and I are excited to share with you that we are going to have another addition to our family. A little boy coming this fall.”
Hilaria Thomas is a graduate of NYU who grew up in Spain and Boston. She met Baldwin on February 2011 in a restaurant called Pure Food and Wine. According to an interview by CNN, Baldwin made the first move .
“I was standing near the door with my friends when [Baldwin] walked up and took my hand and said, ‘I must know you’”
Baldwin later went on to say that perhaps his first words to her might not have been particularly clever, but it seems like there might actually be such a thing as love at first sight.
Alec and Hilaria have been married for four years, and have had three children together, in addition to Baldwin’s daughter Ireland from a previous marriage. Their first child, Carmen was born in August of 2013; their son Rafael was born in June of 2015. Shortly after the birth of his son Rafael, while at the Exploring the Arts Fundraising gala, Baldwin told PEOPLE that he wanted to have another child with his wife.
In his goodbye to public life as published in an article from the February 24, 2014 issue of New York Magazine, Alec mentioned the possibility of leaving New York in an attempt to escape the constant presence of paparazzi and media attention. Baldwin’s primary reasoning for this desire to flee New York was to preserve the happiness of his family, which, as the above statement shows, is of utmost importance to him at this stage in his life.
“There are cameras everywhere, and there are media outlets for them to ‘file their story.’ they take your picture in line for coffee. They’re trying to get a picture of your baby. Everyone’s got a camera. When they’re done, they tweet it. It’s… unnatural.”
Despite Baldwin’s mention of wanting to leave New York after having lived there since 1979, he and his family still reside in the city.
In the article, Baldwin also lamented about the state of his family life a few years prior.
“I did not have a happy family life a few years ago. I was divorced and I was very alienated from my daughter and I was out there cutting every ribbon and running around New York hosting events for different causes to supplant my loss, because I didn’t have a family to go home to… I want a happy home, and for the first time in my adult life, I have one…I love my child more than anything else in the world and I don’t want that to change in any way.”
The daughter that Baldwin referenced in this statement is Ireland, from his previous marriage with Kim Basinger. Alec and Basinger were married for nine years before their divorce in 2002. Judging from his statement while interviewed by PEOPLE, Baldwin’s relationship with his oldest daughter has improved significantly after the birth of her half-sister Carmen.
“Even my daughter Ireland has been visiting and we see her falling more in love with Carmen every day. It’s really fun.”
Hilaria’s mention of Ireland in her announcement of the new member of the Family on the way seems to suggest that Ireland and Alec’s relationship is better than ever, and it seems like that is not likely to change any time soon.
[Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images]