7News Adelaide presenter Elspeth Hussey on her new life as a new mum

The Channel 7 newsreader says the past few years have been a very special journey.

7News Adelaide star Elspeth Hussey with her son, Monty. Picture: Gretl Watson-Blazewicz

It’s been a mother of a year – literally and figuratively – for Elspeth Hussey. This time 12 months ago, she was preparing to marry her “best friend and love of my life”, Alastair Dillon, in a spectacular wedding at North Adelaide’s St Mary’s Church.

Today, after the whirlwind of falling pregnant on their dream Hamilton Island honeymoon, she’s a brand new mum drinking in every blissful moment with little Monty.

“It’s a lot to pack into 12 months,” laughs the 7NEWS presenter and journalist, who gave birth to her son at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital on October 8 – three weeks before her due date.

“By the time we have our first wedding anniversary this January, we’re going to have a three-month-old. Obviously everything’s changed – for the better.

“In fact, over the past 18 months I’ve got engaged in Paris, had my wedding, honeymoon, got pregnant and now have a newborn baby. I don’t think this year and a half will ever be topped.”

Hussey has fallen in love with motherhood – just as she predicted. At her immaculately kept Parkside home, the self-confessed “maternal” 38-year-old is revelling in every milestone with her “chilled little man”.

“He’s got a very calm nature, he doesn’t often cry and sleeps like a champion,” she says.

Elspeth Hussey shares the joys of being a new mum with SA Weekend. Picture: Gretl Watson-Blazewicz

It comes as she’s announced as the new columnist for SA Weekend. Picture: Gretl Watson-Blazewicz

But it’s not without its hurdles. It’s been a huge learning curve of breast pumps, feeding times and paranoid late-night trawls through social media worrying if she is doing the right thing.

And today Hussey shares that loving journey with readers as SA Weekend announces that she’s the magazine’s newest columnist – with her first column being in the magazine and online on Saturday.

“I’m not an expert on motherhood, I’m finding my own way 10 weeks in, learning as I go and learning on the job,” she says.

“I feel like my message would be I think people should share the good parts because there are so, so many good parts. We felt like all we heard was horror stories – people would say I hope you’re getting sleep now because you’ll never sleep again or hope you’re going out for dinner because you’ll never do that again or blow-dry your hair because you won’t have time to do that.

“We were just like ‘What is going to happen to us?’ and every time we watched TV I’d say ‘Is this the last time we’re going to watch TV or go out for a wine?’. We’re probably in a good spot but it is so much better than people would have you believe. Some parents talk it down so much and talk about the bad things If I was on the fence it would probably put me off. Yeah, your life changes but it’s for the better.”

It’s no surprise to Hussey that she’s taken to motherhood so gleefully. In her early 20s, before she started in journalism, she worked as a nanny in London and fell in love with her little charges.

She took care of the daughter of an American news presenter based in the UK, starting when the little girl was just nine months old.

“I was there when she took her first steps … so that was special,” says Hussey, who worked for the family for about a year.

“It was just as iPhones had come in in 2011. I took a video for her mum, Rita, and sent it to her. I said ‘You need to get home as soon as possible’ so that was so special.”

Elspeth says she has fallen in love with motherhood since having new baby boy Monty Michael Dillon. Picture: Supplied

She also worked for former Arsenal soccer star Mikael Silvestre, who had a team of four nannies to take care of his three daughters.

“He was from the French West Indies and we went to St Barts for about a week at a time,” says Hussey, who worked in four-hour day shifts for the family.

“They had a night nanny, a weekend nanny, two daytime nannies and when we went to St Barts they had a chef. It was another world, seeing his wife go out to events and the wardrobe, the clothes, the cars. They lived in a mansion in Hampstead Heath. He’d have soccer friends and managers around to the house and, as a 23-year-old, it was like nothing I’d ever seen. That was an amazing experience.”

There will be no nanny for Hussey when she returns to work, probably this autumn. Instead, she’s enlisting her family to help with childcare – Dillon’s mother Sue and her own mum, Lee, who worked as a nurse at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital for 40 years.

Hussey speaks to her excited mum – a first-time grandma – “at least 10 times a day”.

“She’s had so much good advice, otherwise I’d be rushing off to the doctor every five seconds,” she laughs. “Mum’s a wealth of knowledge.”

The arrival of little Monty – who weighed in at 2.9kg at birth – is the latest chapter in Hussey’s “fairytale” relationship with Dillon, whose family owns Dillons Bookshop in Norwood.

That love story began in their teens, when Hussey first met the former Prince Alfred College student through her Mercedes College friends. They crossed paths on and off over the years and had a “pash” at a St Kilda pub on a night out in Melbourne.

But then their lives went in different directions. Hussey moved to Southern Cross News in Port Augusta before being lured to 7NEWS Adelaide, where – despite an “absolute disaster” on her first live cross, when she found herself lost for words reporting on a new bus lane in Currie St and incurring the news director’s wrath – she quickly won viewers’ hearts as a popular reporter and presenter. Dillon moved to Sydney to work with National Australia Bank. Then, just before Covid lockdowns hit in 2020, they reconnected in Sydney.

“He’d been living there for more than 10 years and I’d gone over with a girlfriend and he was there one night,” she says.

“The next night he said ‘Do you want to go out for dinner?’ and then we just went from there.

“We did wine FaceTimes for a couple of months and eventually he packed everything up and moved back. It feels like it was meant to happen … it does feel a little bit like a fairytale.”

In May 2023, they became engaged in the city of love, Paris, and married in January last year. A couple of weeks later, they discovered they were having their first child.

Elspeth Hussey with her husband Alastair Dillon after revealing their pregnancy laser year Picture: Supplied

The couple share their unique love story. Picture: Supplied

Ten weeks after giving birth, Hussey admits she is missing being pregnant – the butterfly kicks, the growing belly and the glamorous pregnancy wardrobe she was able to raid at Channel 7.

“I loved the bump, I loved dressing for the bump,” says Hussey, who treated viewers to a fashion parade of stylish maternity outfits.

She tried to keep her pregnancy quiet for the first four months but the exhaustion – and the eagle-eyed journalists she worked with – made it difficult to hide.

In the early days, she snuck out to her car for naps between news updates until she was sprung by an editor on a coffee run.

“He said ‘Are you hungover? I saw you sleeping in the car.’ I was like ‘Oh, yeah, I’m just really tired,’” she laughs.

“I spent the first four months trying to hide it but people had started to work it out, Mike Smithson … was on to me, by the time I told people they weren’t surprised at all.

“They bought me a beautiful leather recliner and they put it in one of the meeting rooms so I didn’t have to sleep in the car. I continued to have sleeps in that right up until I went on maternity leave, I just would hit this wall about 2.30pm each day where I couldn’t keep going.”

Monty was all smiles for his close-up. Picture: Gretl Watson-Blazewicz

The couple fell in love and got married last year. Picture: Supplied

Hussey remained working and on screen until she was about eight months’ pregnant. Viewers delighted in watching her progress, sending in sweet messages, knitted booties and treats to feed her cookie cravings.

She was supposed to have four weeks between finishing and giving birth by an elective C-section, but little Monty had other plans.

At 37½ weeks – two days after her baby shower, when she and Dillon surprised their 70 family and friends by revealing that they were expecting a boy – she was woken about 6am by severe tummy cramps.

As she made her way to the shower, her waters suddenly broke.

“It was equal parts exciting and a bit scary, I knew it was a little bit early,” she says.

“Because I was feeling the contractions I thought ‘maybe I should have a go at this and try to do it naturally’. I spoke to my obstetrician and my mum and in the end I decided to still stick with the planned C-section but by the time I could get into an operating theatre, it ended up being about seven hours and so the contractions were so intense.

“I’m glad I got to experience my waters breaking and the contractions.

“ … the C-section was more intense than I thought it would be,” says Hussey – came the magical arrival of little Monty.

She says there are not enough superlatives to describe the instant wave of unrequited love that crashed over her and Dillon as they cradled their son for the first time.

“It was the most amazing moment of my life,” she says.

“Both of us were in tears, it was just amazing, I can’t put it into words. I knew it would be amazing but I was unprepared how much I would instantly love him. We both were just completely besotted from the second we saw him.”

Hussey and her husband – who both have “quite unusual names” – wanted something “interesting” for their baby boy.

To settle on the perfect choice, they channelled a quirky connection. Both Hussey and Dillon had pet dogs when they were teenagers called Monty – hers a fox terrier cross and his a jack russell.

“We said: ‘We can’t do it’ but we both just loved the name,” she says. “It’s perfect for him.”

Hussey and Dillon are already hoping for a brother or sister for Monty.

“I wanted heaps of kids but I think we may have left it a little late for that. We definitely want at least two, though,” she says.

“I knew that I would love being a mum but I was unprepared for how much I would love it. I can’t even imagine not having Monty or life before him. Life is just infinitely better with him, he’s such a joy. Surely the second one is going to be a terror, it’s only fair.”