A Place To Call Home

Growing up she changed schools 16 times in fewer years as her father pursued a career in the Australian Army. Now, Erin Molan tells Tiffany Dunk she’s finally found the stability she’s always longed for.

Sitting back at The Footy Show desk six weeks after the birth of her daughter Eliza, Erin Molan was feeling overwhelmed.

Still recovering from an emergency C-section and suffering from the anxiety of being separated from her newborn, she was also counting down the minutes to the commercial break.

“I have memories of going out during those breaks to breast pump because I was actually leaking through my clothes,” she chuckles in remembrance of those early days of motherhood. “It was bloody hard. But the reality of our situation is that we need to pay our mortgage. It wasn’t an, ‘I am woman, hear me roar, I must go back to work’ thing. It really was just for our family and our situation.”

The word “family” will come up multiple times today as Eliza, now 15 months old and the apple of her mother’s eye, and Erin, 36, celebrate their special bond with The Weekly. Family means everything to Erin. The Nine Network sports presenter calls her mum, Anne, and dad, former major-general and former Liberal senator, Jim Molan, “three or four times a day” she bashfully admits. Her older sibling Sarah, who went through the unimaginable pain of giving birth to a stillborn daughter before winning a battle with bowel cancer, inspired Erin’s passionate ambassadorships for charities including Bowel Cancer Australia and stillbirth support ride Sydney2CAMberra. Younger sister, Felicity, recently “overshadowed poor Eliza’s first birthday” by giving birth to her own first child on June 6, Erin recounts delightedly, adding that the youngest Molan, airline pilot Mick, is “the most incredible, divine thing in the whole world”. And then there’s her fiancé and Eliza’s dad, Sean Ogilvy.

The pair met at Sydney’s Coogee Bay Pavilion, arguably not the most salubrious of venues, while Erin was out with friends for Christmas drinks.