Busy Philipps on Being a Working Mom: Full-Time Help “Makes All the Difference”

The 'Cougar Town' actress talks to TIME.

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Busy Philipps attends The Comedy Central Roast of James Franco at Culver Studios on Aug. 25, 2013 in Culver City, Calif.

During a recent chat with TIME about the new season of Cougar Town, which season-premiered on TBS earlier this week, actress Busy Philipps also discussed the stresses of new motherhood—and why women should feel okay about hiring help, if they can afford it.

When her oldest daughter, Birdie, was an infant, Philipps says, she wasn’t really working, so she didn’t hire much child-care help. “I have to be honest,” she told TIME, “I did it…more or less on my own, and it was really, really, really hard.” But with her latest addition, Cricket (born in July), she had the benefit of full-time help, the factor she credits with facilitating her speedy transition back to the Cougar Town set.

“I had to go back to work when she was, like, 6 weeks old,” she said. “In fact, this season on Cougar Town, people can look forward to me gradually losing my baby weight. It was nuts. But having those extra hands in the house helping really makes all the difference in the world, and I feel so fortunate that I’m able to have that.”

Philipps is not the first TV star to acknowledge that Hollywood moms aren’t always capable of being “supermoms” on their own, despite how things may sometimes seem; Julia Roberts has credited a “village” worth of people for helping take care of her children and thus allowing her to film all over the world, and in 2011, at the TIME 100 gala, honoree Amy Poehler won raves for her toast thanking the nannies who make high-powered careers possible.

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