Hilary Swank Says She’s Game For Any Motherhood Challenges: ‘This Is What I Wanted!’

The actress shares her twins Aya and Ohm with husband Philip Schneider

Hilary Swank is opening up about her path to motherhood.

While appearing on Today with Hoda & Jenna, the actress, 49, chatted with co-hosts Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb about her baby twins, daughter Aya and son Ohm, whom she welcomed in April 2023 with husband Philip Schneider.

"Can we just talk about something you waited for your whole life that finally happened? Did you always want to be a mom?" Kotb asks Swank.

"I did. I mean, I’ve always, even when I was a little girl I was like, ‘I want to be a mom someday,' " the proud mom recalls. "But I also have this career that was like a baby to me that I wanted to give my all to. And then finding the right partner and all of that."

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Related: Hilary Swank Admits 'Sleepless Nights Are Hard' with Twins But Will Look Back Fondly on Them (Exclusive)

Kotb then asks Swank about welcoming her twins a little later in life, calling it a "blessing."

"It absolutely is. I don’t know, because we didn’t have them younger so I don’t know what that would have been like then, but I think there is something for me right now anyhow that I’m able to give my focus to them in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to at that point," Swank explains.

"I can give my all to them because I’m in a blessed position that I can say, ‘Oh, I’m going to go back to work now.’ Or, ‘I’m going to take this time off now.’ Well, we also had an actor’s strike so I had the whole first year with them," she continues.

"There are all these expectations — it’s so funny, parenthood has these cliches, some of which are true. And some are sort of the, ‘You’ll never sleep again!’ " Bush Hager adds.

"Yeah, a lot of complaining. ‘Oh my God, your life gets kind of taken away. It gets hijacked until they get back in school.’ I’m like, ‘This is what I wanted. Good. Hijack the heck out of it!’ " Swank says with a laugh.

Last month, Swank reflected on the ups and downs of raising twins when she attended the premiere of her film Ordinary Angels at the SVA Theatre in New York.

Admitting that nights can be "hard" with twins, Swank shared that there will be a time when she'll look back at this period with a different perspective.

“I think that being a mother of twins, I never have had a singleton, so I don't know what that's like," she explained to PEOPLE. "But I know that the sleepless nights are hard and when you have one that might sleep through the night, the other one's not, so it's kind of this trade-off every night."

“But I know this is also a season, and it too will pass, and I try and remind myself that there's going to be a day when I'm like, ‘Oh, I'd love to wake up right now and just hold you.’ So just trying and hold on to that.”

She also shared that she's looking forward to the next challenge in her twins' lives.

“Well, they're only crawling, so it's not like we're out of control or anything,” she told PEOPLE.

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