Model, business co-founder, podcaster Jess Dover speaks out on separation and rising from the ashes

Jess Dover admits motherhood isn’t easy at the best of times but now, she’s getting candid about becoming a single mum just months after giving birth – and how it’s changed her forever.

Jessica Dover with her son Sebastian, 4. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Six months after the birth of her first child, when her mum was sick with cancer and her older brother was living interstate, model and business co-founder Jessica Dover found the strength to leave her relationship to ex-AFL footballer Jared Petrenko after four years together.

In a moment she calls “absolutely terrifying”, Dover found herself navigating a new sort of motherhood. One without a partner and, initially, with no support system.

Her saviour, she reflects as we sit down with her for a special Mother’s Day shoot at her home, was her son.

Back then he was just a small baby. Today, Sebastian is a boisterous and cheeky four-year- old who runs rings around his adoring mum.

“I don’t think I probably would’ve moved forward in all this if it wasn’t for Seb,” the 32-year-old says.

“I wanted him to have the best, happiest life and if that’s us parents being separated, then I would absolutely do that because I want him to be happy.”

Dover, who appeared with Petrenko on the 2018 season of Channel 7’s reality show House Rules, now says becoming a single mother was “the best thing that ever happened” to her.

“It allowed me to look so within,” she says.

“Becoming a single mum allowed me to completely rebuild who I was, work out what my values were, to work out who I was as a human, both as a mum and as Jess.”

Another single mother described the feeling to Dover as a “phoenix rising from the ashes”.

“That’s what it feels like,” she says.

“I know going forward into this next chapter, this is who I really am.”

Jessica Dover speaks about life as a single mum to her son Sebastian. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Dover admits that she doesn’t want to gointo the nitty gritty of why the couple parted ways but credits her brother, Cain Dover, for supporting her through the very rocky start of solo motherhood. When Dover decided to leave her ex, she began to spiral about how their separation would work, especially with Sebastian being so young.

“I remember one of my girlfriends … she was like, ‘You don’t need all the answers today, even though you feel like you do, you really don’t, because things will change, Seb will grow, circumstances will change and what he needs will change as well,’” she says.

“That was something that almost just gave me permission, and every day I have been telling myself, day-by-day, one foot in front of the other. As mums, we are such planners, we want to see the bigger picture … I had to keep reciting that to myself and to trust that it was going to work out.”

With Sebastian still breastfeeding and facing the unknowns of separation, Dover says the decision was “absolutely terrifying”.

“Looking after a child in a partnership is hard enough, doing that alongside navigating a relationship breakdown was genuinely debilitating,” she says.

“I will not sugar-coat it. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through.

“I was still learning to become a new mum.

“We were beginning sleep training with Seb and we were just starting solids with him, so there’s always these little pockets of transitions in their first few years of life.

“I was having to deal with my personal emotions while trying to be so strong for him (Seb) and be the best I could be and then also the financials and the logistics of separating – the moving out of a home, selling a home … working out what those next steps were, it was really tough.”

When Dover told her brother she was leaving Petrenko he immediately flew across state lines to support her.

“We cried and watched TV and he helped me with Seb,” she says.

“It was nice considering the circumstances.

“I will forever be in debt to him.”

Jessica Dover has since found love with Daniel MacPherson. Picture: Instagram

Jess Dover with baby Sebastian. Picture: Instagram

During her heartbreak, Dover’s mum ChristineMarch, who was also a single mother, was battling lung cancer, which in June 2023 would take her life.

“She wasn’t in a position to be able to physically be there a lot, even though emotionally she was there and she helped absolutely when she could,” Dover says.

She says being pregnant and having Sebastian was her mother’s “light” during the darkest time.

“I’m so grateful she got to meet him and got to see his little quirks and see him at least become a toddler,” Dover says.

“Seb really does remember her which is so special.”

Her mum taught Dover how to be a mother – and how to do it on her own.

“She gave me so much strength knowing you can do it and your life can be so full and so amazing. I owe everything to her.”

Dover says she has confidence in spades thanks to her mother, who’d always tell her how proud she was of her.

“We are the way we are because of our parents,” she says. “I felt that I probably had this confidence, that I’m sure maybe wasn’t warranted sometimes, this self belief that I could kind of achieve anything I wanted.

“I hope I can give that to Seb.”

While Dover and Petrenko went separate ways,Dover admits the couple had shared some incredibly happy times – and that was when she discovered she was pregnant.

She and Petrenko had only just started trying. She had eaten salmon the night before and woke up feeling really sick.

“I thought we didn’t cook it right … all night I felt queasy,” Dover says.

When the test came up positive she was ecstatic. “I remember thinking, ‘This is exactly what I wanted’,” she says.

“I grew up nannying, babysitting, around lots of children, I had finished my teaching degree, I felt quite maternal. I was definitely ready for this next chapter.”

Dover went out and bought little booties to tell Petrenko he was going to be a father.

“Sharing that bond is surreal … to be able to create something that you’ve never done before, it’s magical,” she says. The model was pregnant during Covid which she says came with “pros and cons”.

“I feel like there were positives in that regard that we got to slow down,” she says.

“But I think as well there was that panic that set in for a lot of us that were pregnant, that … everyone was starting to pull back on work … in those moments when you’re really trying to set up yourself and set up your family for the future, I know there were a lot of us that felt very uncertain in those early stages in regards to that.”

It was during her pregnancy, while creating what would later become Sebastian’s nursery the idea for Dover’s business, Something Sebastian, was born.

“I love design and decor … and when I was looking for baby blankets I remember putting a question box on my Instagram asking about personalised baby blankets and I had hundreds of responses and it was one of two options,” Dover says.

“I thought there was no one that was doing it in a very modern age.”

She began researching, collecting fabric samples and organising how her business would eventually come to fruition.

Jessica Dover's son Sebastian Petrenko when he was a baby. Picture: Supplied

On August 6, 2020, Sebastian Petrenko was born, nine days late and Dover says it was the most “euphoric day of (her) life”.

“You’ve waited so long for this little baby to be in your arms and then the second that they’re handed to you, it’s like everything just makes sense – it really is magic,” she says. “I know people say that, but until you experience it, you’re like, yeah I get it, this is what I’m meant to be doing, it’s pretty crazy.” Soon after baby Sebastian was born he was transferred to PICU.

Dover had been pushing for three hours and during her labour medical staff were discussing whether she should have an emergency C-section.

“I remember getting close to that two- hour mark and looking up at the clock and getting quite panicked because I really didn’t want to have a C-section,” she says.

“They put a little clip on his head that was testing his heart rate throughout the pushing and he was fine so I was allowed to keep pushing. I pushed for three hours and he came out and he had a big head and he was 4.2kg, so he was a chubber, but he was fine and healthy.”

However, doctors noticed Sebastian’s oxygen was low so they took him to the PICU for treatment for around 12 hours.

When Dover visited Sebastian she says asking for “her son” felt “so foreign”.

“I was just like, oh my God, those words and me don’t mix,” she says.

“I remember seeing him in the PICU and I had to check his name tag four times because he looked so different from birth to when he was in the crib.

“All his swelling had come down and I just thought he is the most perfect, beautiful baby, my God, he’s mine and that was so special.”

After 24 hours in the hospital Dover and Petrenko could take their little boy home.

She remembers the first car ride like it was yesterday.

“You feel like your whole sole job now is to protect this tiny, little human being,” she says.

“I remember being very nervous … then getting home and that first night, you don’t sleep a wink because you’re checking if they’re breathing every five seconds.”

During the first months of Sebastian’s life, Dover took that time to be completely still, slow and present.

“I really thank Covid for the ability to do that,” she says.

“I soaked in that baby bubble and didn’t push myself to get out of that house or do anything crazy.

“I felt like it was the first time that I gave myself permission to slow down. In this climate, we’re constantly in this rat race of life and I felt like, it sounds almost sad, that we need a baby to give ourselves the permission to slow down, but I felt like for the first time in my adult life, this is my sole job. I really savoured that.”

Jessica says that she was a phoenix rising from the ashes. Picture: Kelly Barnes

When Sebastian was six months old and Dover made the decision to leave her relationship, the plans for Something Sebastian were also “parked”. Eventually, when the dust settled, she and her brother decided to revisit her business plans and launched the personalised baby blanket brand in August 2024.

“It really made sense to join forces and create something special,” she says.

In only six months, Something Sebastian has made six figures in sales and has plans to continue to grow.

“Everything I do is for Sebastian,” Dover says. “I want to show him that it doesn’t matter what life throws at you, you can do anything.”

Dover continues to co-parent Sebastian with her ex, who lives in Queensland.

She is currently dating actor Daniel MacPherson, who is a single father to Austin, and is hoping to have more children in the future.

“I would love to have at least one more – that would feel really special,” she says.

The pair have been dating long-distance for two and a half years and while Dover wasn’t necessarily looking to date another parent she says she’s glad it worked out that way in retrospect.

“That understanding of it and knowing that your child always comes first,” she says. “It changes the way a relationship works when you’ve got children and we both understand that so much and the dynamics of co-parenting.”

Dover says parenthood – motherhood – and the strength and resilience that you must have to be those things, comes from a place deep within.

“Once they’re here and you start doing it, you get it from within. It’s almost like you slowly become this incredible parental figure to your child and it shocks you how much you can do it,” she says.

“We looked at our mums like they were our idols and now we are that to our kids and it’s so bizarre because you do feel like you’re 20 still and you’re figuring it out.

“We’re all winging it, but we’re all doing an amazing job, whatever that looks like.”

Originally published as Model, business co-founder, podcaster Jess Dover speaks out on separation and rising from the ashes