Ashley Graham Recalls ‘Crying’ After Flight Delay Left Her With Less Time to See Her Kids (Exclusive)

“When you're planning out your time to see your children, every minute matters,” the model and mother-of-three tells PEOPLE

Ashley Graham is opening up about some recent difficulties as a mom.

Speaking with PEOPLE at the launch of Eva Chen’s new kidswear collaboration with H&M in New York City, the model and mother of three, 35, recalled a moment she recently "started to spiral" when her flight was canceled from Los Angeles back to New York City.

“It was a journey getting home from L.A. and it took way longer than it should have,” she says. “My flight kept on getting delayed and delayed and then eventually, canceled.”

Graham says that while everyone in her family kept “cool, calm and collected” throughout the travel disaster, she "started to spiral."

“I started crying. I knew I only had one day to see [my kids]. And as a mom, when you're planning out your time to see your children, every minute matters.”

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Related: Ashley Graham Talks Letting Go of Mom Guilt: 'It's Just Going to Hinder You' (Exclusive)

Though Graham was supposed to attend the U.S. Open when she returned home, she says she ended up canceling her plans to stay home with her boys, who she shares with husband Justin Ervin.

“It's little tiny sacrifices you make,” she says. “I would've loved to have seen Coco [Gauff] win in person, but we can always watch on TV,” she continues.

As Graham’s three kids, 3-year-old son Isaac and twins Malachi and Roman, 2, continue to grow up and leave the baby-era behind, the model tells PEOPLE it’s important for her to “soak every moment in.”

“It's so sad,” Graham admits. “It's sad because I want to hold one like a baby and rock it, and they're like ‘No, no, no.’ You're warned as a mother to cherish it now because it's not going to last forever. I always look at those people and roll my eyes. But everybody's right. It goes by so fast.”

“But what I am really grateful for is that every stage of their lives is so fun and so different that it doesn't matter,” she continues. “Once we're graduating one stage, we hop to another and it's just a different kind of experience and fun.”

Graham also shares that having three kids has been hard to manage at times.

“They're so different,” she says of her twins. “I tell them all the time, you're just brothers born at the same time. You're not twins. They're just not alike. So I've got three very distinct different personalities in the home.”

“It's a lot. I'm juggling them and my career and being married," she adds. "And it's like every day you just have to pray and have your peace and then you can get through it.”

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