Pregnancy Doesn’t Slow Down NBC Newswoman

She’s 8 1/2 months pregnant. It’s snowing. And she’s just spent several hours on a train. Just exactly how is Mary Alice Williams feeling?

“Fine,” she answers in a voice octaves higher than her measured network news tone.

Never mind the words. Her expression tells all. She rolls her icy blue eyes, wrinkles her nose and grimaces. It’s an expression you’d never see on NBC, where Williams, 40, is a correspondent and substitute anchor.

“These last couple weeks are really rough,” said Williams, who was visiting Baltimore this week to to speak at the Maryland State Employees Conference. “I had made the commitment before I was pregnant, and you can’t just back out. But we are pushing it.”

Her life has been in a state of flux for the past nine months since she accepted a position with NBC. The decision meant leaving the safe environs of Cable Network News, where she had worked for a decade and earned the title of vice president. Just weeks after beginning at NBC, she and her husband Mark Haefeli learned they are expecting a baby. And last month, “Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,” the controversial news show she co-anchored with Maria Shriver and Chuck Scarborough was canceled.

“Nothing is predictable,” she says wistfully.

Williams’ pregnancy came as a surprise since she had been told by doctors she couldn’t conceive.

Her initial reaction? “Shock and terror and elation,” she says.

She plans to work right up until going into labor and is uncertain how much maternity leave she will take.