Robert Trathan
They’re soon to become the parents of three children under the age of three, but The Coast’s Sam Wallace and his partner Sarah Bowman are remarkably relaxed at the prospect!
The jokes just keep on rolling as the parents of Brando, 23 months – who are 31 weeks’ pregnant with twin girls – catch up with the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly at their Auckland home.
“We’re basically using this platform to let everyone know that from this point on we don’t do any washing or cooking,” Sam quips. “We’re going to put together a schedule for the cleaning and cooking and I’ll be getting that delivered to our friends and family. They can do it however they like, as long as the work gets done!”
And with Sam’s friend and breakfast radio show co-host Toni Street just “one K down the road” he reckons there’ll be a “fair bit of dumping of all three kids at her place”, too.
When Sam, 39, and Sarah, 37, found out they were having twins their first reaction was to laugh.
“I mean, what else could we do,” Sarah giggles. “And then Sam went for a walk.”
“My dream car, my Mercedes AMG63, I could hear driving off,” the former TV weatherman laments with a smile. “And then pictures of Toyota Highlanders slipped into my imagination.”
Big bro-to-be Brando knows something’s going on with Mum!
On a more serious note he adds, “The really weird thing about this is that your priorities just change, and we went from ‘God, how are we going to pay for this?’ to ‘this is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to us’.
“Do you agree, Sarah?” he asks his partner, who is positively glowing as she reclines in her chair next to her Celebrity Treasure Island winner husband.
“Sometimes she agrees, sometimes she says, ‘what are we getting ourselves into?'” he says as an aside.
“Most of the time I agree,” she confirms, with a mischievous grin.
“And do you know what’s even weirder,” Sam continues, “is that my whole career I’ve always been really sensible with money. I’ve never bought my dream car… When other people were buying furniture and having big holidays, we were squirreling away money for no good reason. It was like there was a part of me that knew I was preparing for something.
“And then we had this news.”
One of the first things Sam and Sarah did was buy a new house – Sam’s parents’ five-bedroomed rental, which they’ve just moved into and are renovating.
The pair admit they’d already been feeling the squeeze in their former three-bedroomed home, with a “full-on” toddler and Sam in dire need of office space. “It’s a real sanctuary here,” Sarah smiles. “We sit out here in our garden and say, ‘who are we, sitting here in our established garden?'”
Next on the to-do list will be buying a bigger car and then finding the perfect pram.
“Jenny-May Clarkson [from TVNZ’s Breakfast, who has twin boys] said don’t buy the double stack pram because they don’t fit through doors,” Sam tells.
“We’ve joined some of the multiples clubs on Facebook and they’ve been so supportive,” Sam enthuses. “But basically, the first thing they say is ‘good luck’. They’re pretty quick to let you know that it’s tough.”
Fortunately, Sam’s parents and sister live in the next suburb, and while Sarah’s parents are based in Morrinsville they travel to Auckland most weekends so there will be plenty of family at hand to help.
Sam and Sarah have warned family and friends that they’ll need all the help they can get!
“Mum was a district nurse and always gives very practical advice that I may or may not take on,” Sarah explains. “But it’s lovely to have a different viewpoint that’s also so close to my heart.”
When the couple was given the envelope at Sarah’s 13-week scan that revealed the twins’ gender they chose to hand it to Toni Street and Sam’s other radio co-host Jason Reeves, who surprised them with the news by secretly making over their nursery.
It was an emotional moment, Sam recalls, who burst into tears and hugged Sarah tightly when Toni and Jase revealed the room.
The couple is hopeful that their girls, who’ve had their mother craving melted cheese on toast, will enjoy sitting quietly and playing with books. If they do, it would be in stark contrast to Brando, who loves bashing pots against walls and barely slept for the first 18 months.
“He’s a weapon,” Sam laughs. “But I think, like us, he’s not going to know what hit him when these girls arrive.
“You love him so much, and you don’t want this experience to take away from his love and his attention. We’re determined to make sure that he never feels like our attention is divided.
The doting dad adds, “We’re just going to have to roll our sleeves up and get in there. And if you can pour as much of your energy as you can into your kids and get that right, nothing else matters.”
