Rachel Boston Opens Up About Portraying a Mom for the First Time Since Welcoming Her Own Daughter

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Rachel Boston is living her best mom life — on-screen and off!

Back in January, Boston and her husband, Toya Ashe, welcomed their first child together, daughter Grace.

Grace, now 8 months, previously joined her mom on the set of her Hallmark Channel project, Dating the Delaneys, and Boston tells PEOPLE that there's always been a special connection between her real life and her onscreen portrayals in terms of parenthood.

"Before Dating the Delaneys, I was on the show called SEAL Team, and I was pregnant on the show before I was pregnant in real life. So I had gone on that journey on television — I had a baby girl," she tells PEOPLE. "Then the next season, I ended up having a baby girl in real life."

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Boston's maternal roles continue with Dating the Delaneys, where she stars as Maggie Delaney, a divorced mother to two teenagers who finds herself hesitantly entering the world of dating.

Just as she's getting into the dating scene — with some "practice" help from the father of her son's longtime friend and widower Michael (Paul Campbell), per a release — so are her mother and daughter, setting up three generations of women enjoying the highs and lows of love.

The experience of filming, Boston says, was made more special by the fact that her mom was on set with baby Grace, bringing together three generations of women in her real life at her workplace.

"It was so wonderful, knowing that my daughter is just so loved and cared for like that. It is such a good feeling for me," she says. "Then, to be making a movie every day, where I'm going to set and we have my mother in the movie coming over to check on my daughter, who's with my actual mother, and check on me, [is special]. ... We're all looking out for each other."

Boston explains that she went back to work five months after giving birth and tried to go into the transition with a positive mindset.

"I tried to look at it as expanding her world, that she was going to get to see new things, because we had been very much just home and getting adjusted to this whole new life," Boston tells PEOPLE.

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"It was so nice to be surrounded by such a supportive team," she continues. "... That was really nice, but it's a different animal. I was pumping on my way into work every morning, pumping on the way home and nursing her on set — it's a whole different thing."

Playing a mom for the first time since becoming one herself was an enlightening experience for Boston, though, she says.

"It is so interesting to think back on how different I would have played certain aspects of new motherhood," she shares. "It's just really exciting to be able to claim motherhood and be able to tell these stories now with this understanding."

Boston says she is also excited to continue sharing stories of motherhood, both her own and those of the characters she portrays. "I do feel like I've just entered this sisterhood of understanding what women have gone through and accomplished for so long," she says.

"I think that the tribe of women that have come together to help me as I've interpreted this new chapter, it's been one of the most inspiring parts of the journey of motherhood," adds Boston.

Dating the Delaneys premieres Saturday, Aug. 20th on Hallmark Channel.