The First Thing I did when I Returned Home from the Hospital with my Newborn Son, Jack, was cry Uncontrollably. Tom Brady’s Baby Mama Narrates

The first thing Bridget Moynahan did when she returned home from the hospital last August with her newborn son, Jack, was cry. Uncontrollably. “Everyone says, ‘You give birth, you go home, and you have this amazing baby and it’s just beautiful,’” says the 37-year-old Massachusetts-raised model turned actress. “And I walked in and I just started sobbing.”

It wasn’t postpartum depression, which fortunately Moynahan never suffered from. It was more of an overwhelming (potentially hormonal) anxiety about raising a child. “All of a sudden, you have this newborn you have no training for. It’s frightening.” Much to Moynahan’s surprise, it’s been pretty much smooth sailing since. Eight months later, poolside at a Santa Monica hotel, Moynahan is showing off pictures of Jack, as she now calls him. It’s no shock that with her genes (and those of his father, the 30-year-old NFL quarterback Tom Brady), Jack’s simply adorable.

“There’s my little man,” Moynahan says, nuzzling the screen of her BlackBerry. Dressed casually in a T-shirt and jeans, she lights up when talking about Jack: “Don’t you want to just eat him up? That smile! And that drool!

“I have become that mother I used to dread,” Moynahan admits, shamelessly enumerating the things that Jack has been doing lately. As of press time, they included clapping, crawling, and standing up. “Every time he does something, you think he’s a genius.” She pauses and deadpans, “He’s totally a genius.”

Moynahan never imagined that she’d wind up a yummy mummy without a hubby. “I’m not sure anyone — and I could be wrong in this — grows up thinking, I want to be a single mom,” she says. She had dated Brady for three years, but in February 2007 she found herself in a complicated situation. She was three months pregnant with his child but no longer in a relationship with him. Though she says, “There’s no reason why my son years down the line would need to read anything [personal] about his mother or his father,” it’s common knowledge that Brady has since moved on with Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen, 27. Meanwhile, Moynahan is raising her son alone (though Brady does spend time with Jack).

Going through that traumatic time of being heartbroken and then being pregnant turned my whole life upside down and inside out and just knocked the wind out of me,” says Moynahan. “But I got so much out of that. It’s golden and it’s tough and it was fucked up. But now I have a child, and it’s the best thing in the world.”

Still, making the decision to go it alone was terrifying. Moynahan admits, “You really have to weigh out all the pros and cons and how it will fit into your life professionally, spiritually, and emotionally. Doing it on your own when it wasn’t expected comes with a lot of fears and anxieties. But I felt 100 percent that I could do this.”

Informing her parents of her plans was a challenge. “When you’re suddenly pregnant and no one is standing by your side, even if you’re in your 30s, it’s a hard conversation,” she continues. “I’m a traditional girl, and I believe in marriage, and I just always thought that’s the way I’d be doing this. For a moment, it was hard for me to accept that this was the way I was going to have a family. I’ve had to recognize that there are just so many different options today.”

Fortunately, her family and friends rallied behind her. Will Smith, her costar in 2004’s I, Robot, was “a great support,” Moynahan recalls. “He picked up that phone faster than anybody to make sure I was okay when things were getting hectic.” Despite her initial worries, Moynahan enjoyed her pregnancy. The weight she put on was “all baby.” “Being pregnant just felt so good. I was creating life on a daily basis, I felt beautiful, I felt sexy.

Apparently, she wasn’t alone in that assessment: Moynahan found herself dating at around the six-month mark. “I couldn’t believe how many times I was asked out!” she says. “Not that I went out a lot. When I was faced with doing this on my own, I was worried about how it was going to affect my personal life. I was confident that it was not going to be an issue. And I was right.” She pauses and adds, “God, I’d love to have another one.”

Though Moynahan says she would be fine raising a second child on her own, she would prefer to do it with a husband or partner. “I think it’s important to have a strong male figure in my son’s life,” she says, “and I want something equal to that in my life, as a partner, a lover, a friend. But I’d rather be alone [than] with somebody who doesn’t work. I don’t need that, and my son doesn’t need that.”

Right now, Moynahan is dating, though “not anyone seriously at all.” And having Jack hasn’t hampered her romantic life. “It’s brought higher-quality people into my life because whoever is going to be [with me] understands straight off the bat that it’s a package,” she explains. “If you just want to hang out and have some fun, there are a thousand other girls who are willing.”

Due to the recent writers’ strike, Moynahan has been on unofficial maternity leave, but a television deal at ABC could have her back to work soon. These days, however, her priority is clearly Jack. They swim together daily, and music classes are just around the corner. She’s already introducing him to some of her favorites, like Eddie Vedder, Frank Sinatra, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. “You wake up in the middle of the night singing ‘Rainbow Connection’ one too many times and you just want to jump out the window.”

With that, Moynahan has to race home to greet one of Jack’s friends. “I would love to keep talking to you,” she says, grabbing her bag and hopping into her mom vehicle of choice, a BMW SUV. “But I have a date with a much younger man,” she says, winking. “And I swore I’d given up younger men.”