Adrienne Frantz son first steps B&B Y&R
Credit: Priscilla Grant/Everett Collection

Gentle nudity warning ahead.

When Bold & Beautiful and Young & Restless‘ Adrienne Frantz (Amber) celebrated her 10th anniversary with hubby Scott Bailey (Guiding Light‘s Sandy) she surprised us all with the news that she was pregnant with their third child.

Actually, she told Soap Opera Digest in the most recent issue, she surprised herself by getting pregnant at 43!

More: Alley Mills shares how she survived tragedy

Both Frantz and Bailey, though, have happily embraced the surprise. Plus, it’s been helping the actress feel great about herself, her life and her body. In fact, it’s been helping so much that she just took to Twitter to share an amazing photo embracing body positivity and the beauty of pregnancy.

“Woke up this day feeling beautiful,” Frantz tweeted. “As someone with body dysmorphia, I would never post a ‘fat’ photo of myself! But this is God’s miracle! Someone did this so you could be here! Makes me appreciate that true beauty in life and teaches me to love myself!”

The fans, of course, poured out their support, as did Frantz’s one-time Bold & Beautiful mother-in-law (twice over!), Katherine Kelly Lang (Brooke).

“Gorgeous inside and out,” Lang replied. “Love you!!”

Getting to this point, though, was not easy. And we don’t just mean mentally or emotionally, but physically as well. Frantz’s last childbirth with her son Lion, almost killed her, she told Digest.

“I wasn’t feeling well and the doctor basically ignored me,” the soon-to-be-mother of three shared. It took four days of pain before she begged him to help her and they found that there was, indeed, something seriously wrong. She had a bowel obstruction.

“I had to have emergency surgery and my kidneys had already shut down,” Frantz recalled, “plus other organs were shutting down as well. I went into congestive heart failure, and I spent 10 days in the ICU.”

As if that wasn’t horrifying enough, the resultant mental toll it took on her was heartbreaking.

“I remember lying in the hospital room and thinking, ‘I’m never going to see my kids again,’” she recalled. “I knew if I fell asleep that night, I would never wake up.” She called up best friend, Bold & Beaufitul’s former Becky, Marisa Tait and asked her to stay on the phone all night. “And she was, for the rest of the night. I finally started to feel better, and I’m lucky to be alive. It took awhile to recover from all of that.”

One thing that helped her recover, she’s sure, is getting pregnant with their third child, Killian. As far as she’s concerned, he really is “God’s miracle” and he had a huge hand in getting her to where she was comfortable sharing the photo above.

“I feel like he’s already healed me,” she shared with Digest. She had, after Lion’s birth, needed a heart valve replacement. But the condition that was once so severe that it needed surgery is now just a mild problem.

More: The surprise mystery surrounding Zende

We couldn’t be happier for Frantz, and wish her the best in these last few months of pregnancy. Here’s hoping everything goes wonderfully, and little Killian is welcomed smoothly into his loving family’s lives.

As we get ready for Frantz and Bailey to share even more adorable photos with their soon-to-be three kids, why not take a few moments to check out some pics of other stars and their real-life kids? Because we can never get enough adorable family photos!