Kicker and Wife Set for a Star to Be Born

When Rebecca Feely, the wife of Giants place-kicker Jay Feely, was pregnant with the couple's first daughter, she began an extensive journal to help capture the experience of having a child.

This time, she is giving birth on television.

The memories will be edited into a 30-minute program, a video diary to be shared by the Feelys, their family and friends, their soon-to-be-born daughter and any stranger with basic cable.

Abigail Pamela Feely, who could be born today, will be welcomed by the usual assortment of doctors and nurses, and a camera crew from TLC's reality television show "A Baby Story."

Jay Feely said, "It's just another avenue, another opportunity for us to have an impact on people, hopefully share with people, and express our faith through the beauty of having a child."

He paused and shrugged.

"I'm a glutton for punishment," he said.

The unborn child is due Oct. 30, but doctors discovered late last week that the baby was dangerously turned to emerge feet first instead of headfirst.

So the Feelys, tailed by a production crew, plan to be at the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J., this afternoon after practice. Jay Feely spent parts of last weekend, which the Giants had off, speaking to the baby through Rebecca's stomach and pressing a flashlight against her skin, hoping that the baby would be coaxed to spin into the correct position, as research suggests can happen.

Otherwise, doctors will try to flip the baby today. Doing it successfully may induce labor. Being unable to do it may force an immediate Caesarian section.

Lights, camera, action.

"My preference is that either she comes tomorrow or waits until after this weekend, because the Giants are going to be in Houston," Rebecca Feely said yesterday by telephone from the family's home in New Jersey.

In the background, Jay could be heard correcting her. The Giants play at Dallas on Sunday.

"Oh," she said. "They'll be in Texas somewhere. I would hate for something to happen when Jay can't be there."

He would have to wait for the episode to air, probably early in 2006.

TLC has produced close to 500 episodes of "A Baby Story" over eight seasons. It is TLC's highest-rated daytime show, with a typical audience in the hundreds of thousands, said a network spokeswoman, Keesha Bullock.

Each episode chronicles a family as it prepares for the birth of a child, then somewhat discreetly captures the moment when the baby arrives. TLC interviewed a few Giants at training camp, sat in during a recent couples Bible study at the Feelys' house and interviewed the Feelys at home yesterday.

The couple were given a video camera to capture their lives in recent months, filling four tapes mostly with footage of their 4-year-old daughter, Alexandra, and their 2-year-old son, Jace.

It will be given to TLC and worked into the episode. And like players in other reality television shows, the Feelys have had to face the "confession cam," secretly sharing their feelings to a camera -- and, ultimately, to viewers.

"And I'm not like that," Jay Feely said. "I'm a very cut-and-dried, no-excuses, get-the-job-done kind of guy."

Rebecca Feely has been watching the show for years. She admitted that it usually made her cry. But when she e-mailed the producers after learning she was pregnant last spring, about the same time her husband signed a free-agent contract with the Giants, it was only partly because she felt it might make an interesting story.

She said she also felt that it could heal.

Last November, Jay Feely was a fourth-year kicker for the Atlanta Falcons, and Rebecca was eight weeks pregnant. The Falcons were scheduled to visit the Giants on Nov. 21.

The Feelys planned to see family, to have a nice dinner and to see a Broadway show. Days before the game, Rebecca learned that she had had a miscarriage.

"I wanted to stay home and lay in bed all weekend," she said.

Jay talked her into coming to New York. They went to their dinner. They saw their show. And Rebecca passed the fetus in the hotel bathroom.

Months later, she was pregnant again, and the couple were headed back to New York, this time to live.

The middle name they chose for their new baby, Pamela, was the name of Rebecca Feely's sister, who died of a brain aneurysm at 18 when Rebecca was 2.

Jace's middle name, Michael, is the first name of Jay Feely's brother, who died in 2001 at 26 after living most of his life severely disabled, mentally and physically.

"There is so much more to life than football, and we just wanted to highlight that," Rebecca Feely said. "Whether it's the death of a sibling or the birth of a baby, it's such a opportunity to see God's hand in it, the bigger picture in life."

The Feelys may see it up close today. Everyone else will have to wait until the editing is complete.