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Samantha Harris On Managing Motherhood, Career

Vince Bucci/Getty

After welcoming her daughter in 2007, Samantha Harris learned all too quickly that it often takes a village to raise a child.

The juggling of her career — including her co-hosting responsibilities on Dancing With the Stars, a correspondent for The Insider, and co-hosting Entertainment Tonight Weekend — began only three weeks after delivering her daughter Josselyn Sydney when Samantha returned to the DWtS set.

With baby girl at home with the nanny, the new mama arrived to work with her pump in hand!

“I was breastfeeding so I was pumping again and again throughout the production day and right before I went on stage because we didn’t want to have any mishaps in a gown — on live television!” she tells Working Mother.

Logging long hours on the job has come with a price; Samantha admits days go by where she only sees Josselyn in the afternoon and then at bedtime. “But then there are many days when I’m home by 2 p.m. and I have the rest of the day to spend with her,” she explains.

That said, both Samantha and her husband Michael Hess — with whom she shares a “wonderful partnership” — make it a priority for one of them to greet Josselyn each morning and tuck her in come nighttime.

“We actually had this ongoing competition for who gets to put her to bed or who gets to see her first in the morning.”

When her DWts duties calls, Samantha has been known to bring Josselyn along for the fun! Raised by her rock concert promoter father and her dancer mother, the 36-year-old is thrilled that her own daughter, left in awe by the performances, is showing interest in the arts. “[She] just gravitates to the dancers and wants to watch,” she says.

“She’ll come to the rehearsals and the moment when the dancing is done, she exclaims, ‘More! More dancing! More dancing!’”

Equally catching the 2-year-old’s attention? Television, something that has only recently been introduced to the toddler! “We waited until now…so of course Elmo and Dora are just some sort of mesmerizing concept to her,” laughs the proud mama.

However T.V time comes with a tradeoff. While Josselyn has yet to enter into the infamous terrible twos phase, Samantha predicts it won’t be long! “There’s a little bit of something every day — which is usually after she’s already watched twenty minutes of Elmo,” she shares.

Click below to read about the one thing Samantha lets slide as a mom.
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Brooke Shields Recalls Her 'Innate Desire' for Motherhood

Courtesy Good Housekeeping for use on CBB

Although the relationship with her own mom has been filled with ups and downs, Brooke Shields says the strife never soured her perspective on motherhood.

“From the time I could speak, I knew I wanted to have children,” the 44-year-old actress reveals in the January issue of Good Housekeeping. “It was just an innate desire.”

Mission accomplished! Mom to two daughters — Rowan Francis, 6 ½, and Grier Hammond, 3 ½ — Brooke is candid in the interview about the girls’ less-than stellar moments, and how she chooses to deal with them.

“The other night Grier was just having a fit — screaming hysterically,” Brooke recalls, when Rowan shoved her sister. “I said to Rowan, ‘You know I love you, but when you do things like that repeatedly, it actually makes me not like you. I don’t know what to do with that, because I’m your mom. So can you help me out?’” She then asked Rowan, “Does it feel good in your stomach, when you’re doing that to your sister?”

When her elder daughter replied no, a teachable moment had arisen.

“I said, ‘So we know it doesn’t make me feel good; it doesn’t make you feel good. Is there an alternative? You know, I’m not asking you to be more mature than you should be. You are a kid. But there are some things you just can’t do.’”

Also high on that list are manners. “I think people let their kids express themselves a little too much these days, actually,” Brooke opines. “It’s all sort of, ‘Let them be!’ There are rules.” When Rowan and Grier are rude, for example, Brooke says “it’s over,” adding, “there is no place in the world for it.”

Although she is comfortable playing the role of “bad cop” to husband Chris Henchy‘s good cop, Brooke says that a role reversal was recently instituted after Rowan picked up an unsavory habit.

“I said to my husband, ‘You have to get her to stop rolling her eyes at me.’ If I can’t get her to stop at 6, how will I get her to not smoke crack and get pregnant at 13? If my word isn’t important to her now, my word won’t matter later.”

Click below to read about the girls’ Catholic faith, and how Brooke learned to embrace chaos.

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