Sleepless nights, second-guessing decisions, and so much time spent worrying if you’re getting it right. No wonder, for many parents, the newborn stage of your first child is daunting and difficult.
Jules Sebastian certainly experienced this, telling The Thinkergirls parenting a newborn was easily “the hardest thing I’ve ever done”.
“If I’m just gonna be frank right now, maybe I’m just not a newborn person. I found that phase of life super dooper exhausting, hard,” the stylist, presenter and mum-of-two said on the radio show’s podcast.
But the mum to Hudson, five, and Archie, two, says it wasn’t just the sleep deprivation that had her feeling so anxious during this period, but her attitude to motherhood.
“The answer is if you want to have babies, 100 per cent do it, best thing I’ve ever done easily… but you just have to know it is life-altering, un-take-back-able and everything changes,” she told hosts Stacey June and Kristie Mercer.
“I was like, ‘Our lives are not going to change, he’ll fit into ours.’ Nup. You just have to know that is that.”
She said she first began to realise how much her life had changed when her eldest son Hudson was five days old.
“I remember when I came home from hospital with Hudson, I needed to get milk… what is a five-minute exercise turns into a 45-minute thing.
“You’ve just made a human being and that human being needs you 100 per cent of its life. That’s it now.”
Sebastian, who is married to singer Guy Sebastian, said she found it difficult to adjust to living according to a schedule another tiny human has dictated.
“It’s very, very jarring. I like doing what I want, when I want to do it. Not in a selfish way, that’s just what I want. I just want to do it. I want to go there, and do this and that’s the end.”
“But then with babies, they force you to be less like that. You can’t be.
“That I think was a thing that I had to really work through. Cos I was almost a bit like resentful.”
She said up until the start of 2017, she continued to fight to keep up a similar workload to what she’d had before kids. When she realised this was doing her more harm than good, she did something that she says made her a better mum and a happier person: she surrendered to motherhood.
What does the home life of one of Australia’s most successful singers look like? Guy Sebastian opens up about his family.
“These two precious little angels that need me to take care of them, what a privilege, what an honour. Like that’s more how I’m viewing it now rather than ‘how annoying that I can’t go and get the milk.’ Like it doesn’t matter.”
“Where I fought it for so long, having babies, trying to everything, have the perfect life, keeping it all together. Up until this year, I really was doing too much and trying to be everything to everyone.
“I was very, very anxious and I didn’t know it. I actually did not realise. Until that feeling left me, I didn’t know that I had it.
“Until this year, I took everything back and decided, I’m just going to surrender.”
Sebastian said this meant letting go of some of her commitments, saying ‘no’ to opportunities and invitations more often and focussing more of her energy and time on her kids.
She said they were always her first priority, but now she makes the rest of her life fit theirs, rather than putting pressure on the time they spend together.
“I’m in the moment. I’m in the car now with my kids singing songs, I’m not road-raging cos I’ve got five emails to get back to and everyone’s at me.”
She told The Thinkergirls it’s changed her as a mum and as a person and she’s “much more pleasant to be around”.
“It’s just better for everyone, better for my kids, better for Guy, better for me.
“It’s a good feeling.”
Listen to the latest episode of This Glorious Mess.