Actress Kim Raver started her career on Sesame Street and has starred in television series including Third Watch, 24, The Nine and, most recently, Lipstick Jungle. She lives in New York City with her husband, Manu Boyer, and their sons, Luke, 7, and Leo, 1.  This 40-year-old TV veteran is most happy when she’s taking care of her two boys and playing the role of Mom.

See Kim at Celebritybabyscoop.com   The way I got started in acting was really random, but it worked out perfectly. My mom was a single, working mom and she took us shopping for school clothes. My sister and I were sort of crazily running around the store and this woman came up to my mom and told her we seemed really fun. Said she was doing this show called “Sesame Street.” This was before Sesame Street was so well-known. So my mom took us in for an audition and I was too young at the time, but my sister started on the show first and, when I was old enough, I started too. I did it for three years.

It was so much fun. I loved going into this world of imagination with The Muppets, on this huge sound stage. My mom never would have gotten us into it if it was hard work. But I was basically paid for preschool, where I was learning my numbers and the alphabet. What could have been better for my mom?

Now that I’m a working mom, it’s such an inspiration to look back and realize that my mom was a working mom, too. I learned from her that it’s the quality of time you spend with your kids that matters. Even if I’m working long hours, when I come home, it’s all about Luke and Leo. I love the little things like feeding them, bathing them and reading them stories. I was on an airplane recently and my 16-month-old was throwing up all over me and, even though I had help, I was the one who was caring for my child. I’m not the type of mom who’s going to hand over my kid and have someone else clean him up.

It’s really important to me that I’m there to take care of them and make sure the bumps and bruises are okay or make sure their sunscreen is slathered on during the summer.

Sun protection is so important to me, especially since my friend’s son died from melanoma. It was devastating. That’s why I became the spokesperson for the Olay Skin Cancer Takes Friends (skincancertakesfriends.org) campaign. The fact that this disease can be prevented with SPF and hats and long sleeves is really encouraging. It’s stuff we can easily do. The dermatologists involved in the Olay campaign are offering free skin cancer screenings for you and a friend from May through July. It’s about helping other people, being there for support and potentially saving a life, which I think is a great message.

It’s so important to have a support system, especially as a working mom. My husband, Manu, is amazing with the kids. Just from the day they were born, he jumped right in and he was changing diapers. And if we’re both working, I have my sister, my mom, my stepdad—I’m so lucky to have all of them living in New York.

I’ve also always had great support at work. When I got pregnant with my son, Luke, I was doing the show Third Watch, which was an incredibly physical show with firefighters and I had to lift gurneys. But I had an amazing producer, who knows the value of family and found ways to make it work. Luckily, I was wearing a big paramedic coat, so I was pregnant until the last minute of shooting and then we were on hiatus. During my pregnancy with Leo, I was doing Lipstick Jungle. Being in sample size clothing with a big belly was an interesting, tricky thing. But I’ve never seen a group of people rally behind me and support me as much as our executive producer and everyone on that set. Not only during my pregnancy, but afterwards when I was nursing for 10 months.

It’s a real juggling act. I’m fortunate because I had a nursery on the set, so I had my children with me during the day. But it’s tricky managing ten pages of dialogue and costume changes and then feeling stress because you want to be the parent and also do your job really well. So you learn to multitask and get things done in a shorter period of time. I would memorize my lines on the way to work and get my emails done while I was in hair and makeup so I could go spend time with the kids. It’s a tough schedule; if I had to be up at 4am, I’d go to sleep at 7pm. And I learned to sacrifice some things like watching TV.  I wasn’t doing much for myself.

But Luke and Leo have learned to be flexible too, just like I learned to be flexible when my mom was working. I remember one Halloween, I wanted to be an egg. Not a ballerina or a princess—an egg. So my mom went out and bought a balloon and covered it with paper mache  and turned it into an egg. But she forgot to cut holes for my arms! So I wore it without arms. And, like my mom, I try to do the best I can for my kids and not to take the easy way out, and my kids learn like I did that they have to be flexible. If their costumes don’t have arms, they don’t have arms.

My character, Nico, on Lipstick Jungle is a strong career woman who is thinking about having a baby on her own. Her ex-boyfriend, Kirby, told her, “you could never have a kid because other things are too important to you.” But I think that’s what she’s willing to do—change certain priorities in order to have a child. Being open to change when you have kids makes the whole process more enjoyable.