Zoe Saldaña Opens Up About Raising Three Boys, Teaching Them to 'Celebrate Their Feminine Self' (Exclusive)

The actress shares her three sons with husband Marco Perego-Saldaña

Zoe Saldaña is opening up about life as a busy mom of three.

While speaking with PEOPLE about her support for the SNOO —  the robotic bassinet from Happiest Baby that was recently granted De Novo approval by the FDA — the actress, 45, also got candid about raising her three sons.

The Avatar star, who shares twin sons Cy and Bowie, 8, as well as son Zen, 6, with husband Marco Perego-Saldaña, tells PEOPLE that parenting is the "most amazing thing, but it's real."

"We are here to set very big tones for them in life on how to be, how to react, how to regulate, how to repair, how to heal, how to stand up for yourself. So they're going to be constantly mirroring what you do, knowing that you're being observed at all times," she continues. "It definitely makes you a lot more mindful than you have ever been in your whole entire life."

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Both with busy schedules, Saldaña says that she and her husband, a producer and director, are "constantly adjusting and readjusting" as parents and are "very honest with each other about what your bandwidth feels like it can be."

"Certain seasons, I'm the one that may be taking over all of the domestic operations so that my husband can mentally break away and focus on his creativity. And other seasons when I go completely back into work mode, then we're switching off," she explains. "I don't think it's ever an even share of the load, which is why I think it's important to be absolutely transparent with your bandwidth and where you are and how you're doing."

"But love comes with everything, so it's always with the understanding that, 'Today for you, tomorrow for me,' and we've been constantly in that back and forth."

Saldaña, who has been open in the past about not raising her boys with gender-specific roles, also shares that she and Perego-Saldaña are "teaching our little boys to honor women and to celebrate women."

Also "very important," she says, is that they're teaching them to "honor themselves, their femininity, to celebrate their feminine self as well."

"We're very hard on our boys the same way we're hard on women. And boys are encouraged to be strong and to suppress their emotions. And then once you learn to do that so much for so long, you become completely excommunicated from your feelings," she says. "We definitely understood the assignments and accepted it knowing that we were raising boys during a time when women's movements are so important."

Looking back on her earlier years with her boys, Saldaña shares how using the SNOO was a "wonderful" tool to keep both her and her sons calm.

"Once we heard about SNOO, we did our own research and we were able to test it with our youngest son," she recalls. "It was just wonderful knowing that he could be taking a nap and we did not need to worry whether or not he was safe, or having somebody supervise him constantly out of fear of, 'What if he turns around? What if he lays on his stomach? What if he's face down?' all of these things."

"And our son, for the first year of his life, would just sleep really peacefully in his SNOO and we loved it," adds the actress, who was one of the SNOO's first investors. "Our child always felt safe in his SNOO and he would go into a deep sleep within I would say, three minutes of being in his bassinet. And that was amazing. Whereas it would've taken us 30 minutes holding him and rocking him back and forth."

Saldaña says using the SNOO also helped with her exhaustion as "sleep deprivation and rest deprivation is really real when you have a newborn."

"I do believe that many accidents happen because parents fall asleep and are not there to supervise. Knowing that your child is safe for at least 30 to 40 minutes of whatever that nap time is, gives you the ability to fully rest. And I would say reset your nervous system, which is so important."

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Read the original article on People.