By Casey Neill
Emily Sexton was nervous about having a second baby seven years after welcoming her first.
“I was really content with what I had,” the Seddon mum said.
“I had an amazing child and I loved being a mum of one, so I guess I was nervous.
“We had a lot of intimacy when it was just one of them.
“I think I was trepidatious about that, and perhaps losing some of that closeness.”
But she needn’t have worried about sharing her time between Marlowe, 7, and Maeve, 8 months.
She feels like she has time for both, and they have all the time in the world for each other.
“Because Marlowe is older there’s not that competition for attention,” she said.
“It’s on the whole been way easier than I feared it would be.
“Marlowe’s an excellent big brother.
“Maeve thinks Marlowe is the funniest, most amazing person in her whole life.
“The relationship between the two of them is pretty joyous.”
Emily thought she and husband John Bailey would either stop at one child, or have a big gap between babies “mostly for career reasons”.
Unlike many mums, she didn’t feel the pressure to hurry up and give Marlowe a sibling – mostly thanks to her mum.
“She said ‘what you have is amazing’. That’s all,” she said.
“She just took it away as a feeling of pressure. It was very kind.
“Once mum and I had that chat I just didn’t worry.
“It was like she made the decision for me and I really loved her for it.
“Lockdowns just made it feel like there was space for another child.”
Covid restrictions also helped with Emily’s return to work.
“Things have shifted in terms of work flexibility more generally,” she said.
“I have a lot of control over how I execute my three work days.
“Both times I’ve gone back to a job share arrangement and I really love it.
“I learn a lot from that other person and it just takes the pressure off.”
Emily is the co-artistic director at North Melbourne theatre venue Arts House.
She started with Melbourne Fringe Festival, ran Next Wave and moved to The Wheeler Centre before landing at Arts House in 2018.
“I’ve always worked in the arts,” she said.
“My partner is the primary carer, one of 7 percent of men in the country who are like that.
“I think there’s some interesting flow-on from that.
“For fathers it can be quite an isolating experience, especially when you consider that that 7 percent includes gay dads as well.”
A recent lunch with an old friend in a similar role was helpful for John.
“They both felt really validated to share that for them, family was taking a front seat over career for a time,” Emily said.
“It was such a unique conversation for him.
“It’s been seven years for him to be able to have that moment.
“It would be amazing to have the structural support for it to be more of a common occurrence.”
Maeve attends childcare next to Marlowe’s school.
“It unlocks such capacity in your life,” Emily said.
“We’re very fortunate that they’ve made such a big investment in that Footscray learning precinct.
“Melbourne’s growing. The more we follow that infrastructure with childcare that’s affordable, the more successful those communities will be as a whole, not as individuals.
“Once your kid goes to school that unlocks most of your neighbourhood and it’s so great.
“The way zoning works, it’s your neighbours that your kid goes to school with.”
Emily was 33 when she had Marlowe, which was quite young among her group of friends.
“The actual birth was on the day I finished work, so that was not ideal,” she said.
“This time it was pretty awesome to get that mat leave time where you can watch movies and waddle around and mentally prepare yourself.
“When I was younger the transition into being a mum felt pretty full on and I felt quite acutely how I was missing out on stuff.”
But now her friends are in a similar life phase and she’s more embedded in her community.
“I think the best part has been a knowing, an understanding of time – that whatever you’re going through it ends and that everything’s a phase and that if you’re finding something hard, very shortly you’ll be onto the next thing,” she said.
“I’ve loved the second time around because I just don’t worry like I did the first time around.”
