SAMANTHA HAYES ‘My life feels complete’
It’s a beautiful summer afternoon and all is calm at Samantha Hayes’ Auckland home. The sun is streaming through the windows, tūī are darting around the native bush outside and music plays gently in the background. The broadcaster’s baby daughter Amaya is sound asleep in her basket and two-year-old Marlow is happily ensconced at daycare just down the road. To the outside observer, Sam appears to have life as a new mum-of-two firmly under control.
“Oh, it’s not always like this,” the Newshub anchor laughs, ushering us through the front gate of her city-fringe home for our socially distanced outdoor catchup. “It might be peaceful now, but this morning, it was chaos! Marlow accidentally poured a bottle of milk on the floor, then jumped on me and spilled my coffee everywhere. Then he woke up Amaya on his way to the wardrobe, where he pulled all my clothes off their hangers trying to get me a new outfit.
“But you just have to take a big deep breath and remind yourself it really doesn’t matter if there’s coffee on the couch or Weet-Bix all over the carpet. One look at Marlow’s sparkling eyes or Amaya’s big, beautiful smile and things feel better again pretty quickly.”
While welcoming daughter Amaya slap-bang in the middle of a level 4 lockdown brought its challenges for Sam and her fiancé Jeroen “Jay” Blaauw, it also gave the couple the chance to slow down. No more rushing and no distractions – just pure, uninterrupted family time.
“There have been some incredible silver linings to this outbreak,” says the Three star, whose maternity leave started the day the Delta variant was first detected in the community. “In some ways, it was daunting because we were on the brink of having a second baby and everything just stopped.
“Marlow’s daycare closed
