The road to motherhood wasn't easy for Marianne Infante, but every day, she's shocked by how much she can achieve. Photo / Amalia Osborne
It has been six months since Marianne Infante’s life changed forever when her baby girl Emilia was born.
Every day, she’s shocked by how much she can achieve on so little sleep, how many tears one person can cry – both her and Emilia – and how much her perspective on life has changed in a short time.
“I’m enjoying the revelation about what’s important in life,” smiles the 30-year-old. “I used to stress about the small stuff, but now there’s only one small person that I will choose to do hard things for.”
As she looks at her cherubic little girl asleep in her arms, the Shortland Street star confesses she’s often struck by how adorable her baby is.
“Sometimes when someone else is holding her, I will think, ‘She’s so cute, I want a baby’,” she says. “Then I remember that I made her!”
Like many new mothers, Marianne’s regularly plagued by doubt.
But it’s clear watching the pair she has found her groove. When Emilia lets out a small cry while being held by a member of the Weekly team at the shoot, Marianne quickly identifies what that particular mew means and offers a way to calm her. It works immediately.
“Every day, something knocks me off my feet and reminds me that I’m still new at this,” the Proudly Asian Theatre executive director confesses. “But then there are moments where I really surprise myself and I find a bit of grace to think, ‘I did really well today’.”
“My partner Daryll said to me, ‘I always knew you’d be a good mum, but I’m amazed just how good you are’. It was so sweet and I didn’t realise how much I needed that affirmation.”
While Marianne has had time to get to know the newest member of their family, Daryll, 30, had to return to work two weeks after Emilia was born. On days when he’s in the office, he leaves before Emilia wakes and returns after she’s already gone to bed.
It’s been hard on both, but it makes the moments Daryll gets with Emilia even more precious.
“I get emotional when I watch them together,” Marianne says of their bond. “I don’t think I have seen true love in physical form until now.”
The road to motherhood wasn’t easy for Marianne.
Just weeks into pregnancy, she suffered an ovarian torsion that required emergency surgery to save both her ovary and her baby.
After such a terrifying start, she hoped for a smooth birth, but as she puts it, “Emilia wanted a grand entrance”.
Marianne was in labour for 43 hours. She could barely keep down any food, she couldn’t sleep and the dehydration and pain of the contractions made her feel like she’d “run 500 marathons in two days”.
She was determined to give birth without surgery, and credits her support team of Daryll, her sister Mae, her midwife and the staff at Waitākere Hospital for doing everything they could to help her achieve that goal.
By the end of the second day, Emilia’s heart rate began to drop and it became evident she was in distress.
With nothing left in the tank, Marianne knew it was time to accept medical assistance to bring her baby safely into the world.
After hours of pain, she was stunned by how quick the C-section procedure was. Once she knew Emilia was safely out, she was overwhelmed with emotion, but so exhausted that she couldn’t even cry.
“I was so worried, I couldn’t hear her crying,” she recalls. “It was probably 30 seconds, but it felt so long. Then I heard this little cry and they put Emi on my chest. She was this fat, little baby and she was so cute. I thought, ‘No wonder you couldn’t come out the way we had planned!’”
Stepping into this new phase of her life has meant closing the door on her time as Madonna Diaz on Shortland Street.
Though she knows there is no way she could have balanced the long days on set while being a parent, she gets emotional as she reflects on her time in the beloved soap as the trailblazing Filipina nurse she embodied for the past four years.
“Honestly, I do miss Madonna,” she confesses. “I had this thought that once I leave, no one will care about her. But when I saw the episode where Vili [played by Theo David] was talking about his heartbreak over Madonna having a baby with someone else, I bawled my eyes out. I’m really proud of the work I did.
“I would absolutely go back one day. But right now, Emilia is my focus.”