When Samantha Harris returned to the set of Dancing With The Stars—just a mere three weeks after having given birth to daughter, Josselyn Sydney Hess, now 2—she found herself in an unprecedented situation. “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 says. But these days, the seasoned entertainment news journalist is dealing with more than breast pumps and ball gowns. With a jam-packed work schedule— dual duties co-hosting Dancing With The Stars and working as a correspondent on The Insider –and also co-hosting Entertainment Tonight Weekend, her biggest challenge has been squeezing in quality time with her daughter.  “When I’m doing DWTS, I’ll have some hours free in the morning with her and then go in for the rest of the day. Sometimes she comes to the set, too.” Josselyn, who has seemingly been passed down her mother’s love for the arts, “just gravitates towards the dancers and wants to watch,” Samantha says. “She’ll come to the rehearsals and the moment when the dancing is done, she exclaims, ‘More! More dancing! More dancing!’” Since her father was a rock concert promoter and her mother was a dancer, Samantha loves that her daughter is getting early exposure to the theatrical side of the world because “that’s how I grew up.” On the days of The Insider, there are some days when Samantha only gets to see her daughter in the late part of the afternoon and then for dinnertime and bedtime. “But then there are many days when I’m home by 2pm and I have the rest of the day to spend with her—since the day begins with me being at the makeup chair by 5 or 6 in the morning—allowing for an earlier finish,” she happily shares.

While Josselyn has a nanny to watch her while mom and dad are both working, Samantha says that she and husband, Michael, both make sure that one of them is there to get up with Josselyn in the morning and put her to sleep at night. “We actually had this ongoing competition for who gets to put her to bed or who gets to see her first in the morning,” she says. While they trade off who gets to read to her and put her down in the crib, “we always do bath time and lotion and getting her into her pajamas together.” Samantha acknowledges that she feels “very lucky” that Michael is 100% father and parent as much as she is. “We have a wonderful partnership in raising her together.”

Sometimes that means hanging out with their daughter while watching television to reinforce what she’s learning on the screen. “Josselyn is two, and we waited until now to introduce her to TV, so of course Elmo and Dora are just some sort of mesmerizing concept to her,” Samantha says. Though she hasn’t hit the terrible twos just yet, “there’s a little bit of something every day—which is usually after she’s already watched twenty minutes of Elmo,” she says. Between long days at work and time spent with Josselyn at home, Samantha is finding that “the sacrifice comes to my own personal time.” The self-proclaimed fitness enthusiast admits that her workouts have definitely dwindled. “My workouts are the one thing that I would do every day if I could find the time to carve out for myself,” she says. Samantha discloses that there are the occasional times where if it’s a long studio day at The Insider with a window of two hours in the middle of the day, then rather than spending an hour commuting home to see her daughter for 20 minutes, to then commute back, she opts go to the gym on the studio lot or take a cardio bar class, or boot camp class instead. “That clears my head and I feel much more productive,” she says. But naturally, that doesn’t always work out. "Workouts don't always work out."

Even while sacrificing personal time for her daughter’s sake, “the one thing I feel guilty about is not cooking for my family,” says Samantha, confessing that they resort to either ordering in, picking up food or a twice-a-week meal delivery system. “I grew up in a family where my mom cooked dinner every night of the week—and I also do love to cook—but I work so much that, to come home and have to make my daughter be occupied so that I could cook, is not something that I want,” she says. Instead, Samantha would much rather spend quality time with her daughter and do things together that Josselyn wants to be doing. This dedicated mom reveals that her role model for parenting has always been her older sister, who has two kids. “I think she is an incredible mom,” Samantha gushes. “When I was newly married, I had always said to my husband, ‘I hope I can be half the mom she is.’” And although she whole-heartedly admits that, “I have by no means figured out the universal solution,” with optimism she says, “at least so far I hope what I’ve been doing has been working!”