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Six months ago, Mamamia's very own Jessie Stephens started her maternity leave.

For most women, there are a couple of days, or at least a week of rest before the baby comes.

But mere minutes into it, Jessie gave birth to her twins.

Margot and Harry arrived early, by emergency cesarean at 33 weeks and five days.

Jessie and her husband Luca were already parents to their daughter, Luna, who was two at the time.

What followed was months in and out of the NICU, feeding schedules multiplied by two and life with three children under three.

For the co-host of Mamamia Out Loud, author and mum, it was a "real journey".

Listen: Jessie Stephens talks about her very raw birth story. Post continues below.

But there was also a part of those first six months she hadn't spoken about publicly before.

"After I had the twins, and I was home, and they were in NICU, I went to a really dark place mentally," Jessie tells Kate Langbroek on No Filter.

"And I thought, imagine getting everything you've ever wanted and not being able to feel it."

It's a startling admission from someone who speaks so openly about how much she loves being a mum to her three children.

But, as Jessie explains, both things can be true.

Jessie has built her career on being honest about her life. Yet, she admits motherhood has made that honesty a little more complicated.

"I've found motherhood a little harder because if I say 'I love it, and I've had the best three years of my life with those three little people', I know how that will make some women feel," she explains.

"There's a lot of guilt about that," she adds, knowing what she went through after the twins were born.

"Hearing someone say they love it is just rubbing salt on the wound. So candour in the context of motherhood, can be really cruel, because if you were doing this with less help than I have, well, it's the fun that goes, that's the first thing."

For Jessie, loving motherhood and acknowledging how difficult it can be are not mutually exclusive.

"The worst thing you can tell someone who's in a dark place is you should be enjoying it," she says. "And, oh, you only do this once, they're only going to be little for so long."

"There are so many reasons why this period is not fun for people and none of those reasons are their own fault."

Before Margot and Harry arrived, Jessie had plenty of fears about becoming a mum of three, including for her marriage, identity and her daughter Luna.

"There was fear for my marriage, also knowing that Luca is younger, so a lot of his friends haven't had any kids yet, and he was going from one to three," she said. "And the pressure that would put on him and what that would do in terms of stress."

Having two at the same time is its own obstacle.

"I know that a lot of couples who have twins — everyone's always holding a baby," she said. "Often when I want to have a go at Luca, he is holding at least one baby."

Some fears were more internal.

"I was scared about identity and not recognising who I was," Jessie admits.

"I was scared about what day-to-day life would look like. I was scared about the mum I would become to Luna."

She also worried about what the twins themselves would be like.

"What if you bring home a psychopath, you can't give him back?" she jokes. "What if you've got the baby that won't stop screaming?"

But, she explains, most of those worries disappeared once the twins arrived.

"I think I was mostly scared about what it would do to career and creativity."

"But the fact that once they come, those worries mostly dissipate is a testament to how much you must love them."

Jessie has already started writing about the experience of having twins.

While they were in the NICU, she would write quickly and freely about what was happening.

She calls it "lightning writing".

"I kind of did it, like especially when the babies were in NICU," she recalls. "I wrote and wrote about what that experience was like and accessing this whole world I didn't know existed."

She's now thinking about what she might eventually do with those words.

Life with three children under three is exactly as chaotic as you'd expect.

There are bottles. Lots of bottles. There are nappies, sleep schedules, toys everywhere and three small people who all need something at the same time.

There are the moments where Jessie is simply trying to get through the day.

"That's harder than any work day, any exam, anything I've ever done," she recalled of recently spending 13 hours alone with the three children at once. But, she adds, "I love it."

Becoming a mum of three has given Jessie plenty to think about, and she describes parenting as "an exercise in perpetual surrender".

She explains, "If you grip on too tight, and you go, naps, feeding, I want my daughter to be this type of person… it's going to hurt.

"You've just got to wake up, put your hands in the air and go, what will today bring? And be pleasantly surprised."

"Who you loved yesterday is a new version," she explains. "You are losing someone every day as you are finding someone new."

And yet, for all the fear she felt before the twins arrived, Jessie says this experience is different from the periods of depression and low points she's experienced before.

"This is unlike that," she reflects. "There is a joy unlike that."

Jessie is also learning that while Margot and Harry may have been born together, they're two completely different people. She's already seeing it in their personalities.

Margot smiles at her every morning. Harry, on the other hand, screams in her face.

"They are just different people with different natures," Jessie observes.

It's something she says has been a useful reminder about parenting in general.

"You could do it a hundred times and get a hundred different results."

She's particularly conscious of not treating the twins as though they have to hit every milestone at the same time. 

They're currently starting solids, and Jessie says Harry was immediately interested while Margot clearly wasn't ready.

"You realise how easy it is with twins to either rush one or stunt one," she explains. "These are two individuals, and you're trying to make them do the same thing on the same day, and they don't want to."

She knows this all too well, since Jessie has spent her entire life alongside her own identical twin sister, Clare.

The pair famously worked together at Mamamia (yes, Clare is another one of our favourite Mamamia Out Loud co-hosts and was our former editor-in-chief), and Jessie says growing up as a twin meant they were incredibly close.

In fact, they were so close, they didn't always have the same boundaries as other people, or even siblings.

Jessie says a psychologist describes the phenomenon as "checking behaviour".

It was the habit of going out socially and then coming home and asking Clare whether she'd behaved okay.

"It's like you rely on your shadow," Jessie explains. "It's like you have another version of yourself who can offer you reassurance."

In the long term, she says it can be undermining, because you never learn to completely back yourself.

"People who aren't twins know what it is to walk into a room on your own and to just have to back yourself," she reflects. "And that can be a really good thing."

Jessie says she and Clare had to learn independence differently. Now, she's conscious of allowing Margot and Harry to do exactly that.

When she found out she was having a boy and a girl, she says she felt some relief.

"I think they will more so have to enter rooms on their own and have independence," she tells Kate. "Hopefully there's less comparison."

Jessie and Luca met while working at Mamamia. And ICYMI, Luca is also the son of Mamamia founder Mia Freedman, which made their office romance a little more complicated.

At the time, she had absolutely no intention of dating him.

"It certainly wasn't love at first sight or immediate attraction," she recalls.

Then… came the whispers from their colleagues.

Luca had a habit of chopping up an apple in the afternoon and bringing a plate over for everyone to share.

"I remember someone going, he likes someone at this table, and it's not me," Jessie laughs.

Eventually, they started spending time together outside work.

Clare warned her to be careful, and other people did, too.

But Jessie says the relationship felt safe and she trusted it, even though it created tension in the office.

"I just sort of put my fingers in my ears and thought, let the work speak for itself," she remembers. "If I just put my head down, and I just work hard, then what they're saying is not true."

More than a decade later, Jessie and Luca are married with three children, and their work and family lives remain deeply intertwined.

Luca is the newly appointed CEO of Mamamia, while Jessie is returning to Out Loud.

But navigating work, marriage and a family hasn't always been easy.

"There have been moments of it being really hard," Jessie admits. "I had a moment where I selfishly said to him, 'There's not a lot in this for me.'

"I come into work and I record the podcast and then this thing happens over here that I didn't even know about," she says. "It looks as though I am in a boardroom. I am not in.

"That's a lot to wear as someone who has never run a business. I've found myself in this position where like that's Luca's pursuit and it's what he is really good at. It is not what I am really good at. It can look like I'm pulling strings again that I'm not pulling."

None of those worries can outshine her excitement for Luca.

"He's really good at it, and he's got the same attitude, which is that people are going to say what they're going to say, and they're absolutely allowed to say it," she says.

"You've just got to put your head down, do the work, and the work will speak for itself."

In amongst being married to a CEO, raising three kids under three and her own return to work, it's busy.

She works hard to keep up that feeling of connection in the marriage.

"We talk a lot," Jessie admits.

"I talk to girlfriends about this all the time. There is nothing like postpartum with heterosexual couples that just pulls you apart.

"You just go, we are living completely different lives, doing completely different things, and there's no language with which to bridge this because you just couldn't.

"Breastfeeding twins, like tandem feeding them and the complexity and everything, and then going to the doctor and being told that they're not putting on enough weight, like you just can't ever explain that. So there's certainly... difficulty through that."

But the couple have found other ways to stay connected.

"We love documentaries, and we love podcasts, and we just talk about stuff that isn't the kids," she says. "I suppose it's that, too, that makes me feel like I've still got a best friend."

And then, in the middle of the interview, Kate surprises Jessie with a sweet recording from Luca, telling his wife what he loves about her.

Unsurprisingly, Jessie is delighted.

"I do like compliments," she confesses.

You can listen to the full conversation with Jessie Stephens on No Filter. The episode, "'I Went to a Really Dark Place": Jessie Stephens on the Six Months Nobody Saw", is available now wherever you get your podcasts.

Feature image: Instagram @jessiestephens90.