Olivia Dean’s music will always feel like summer to me. I first heard her voice in December 2022, at a dinner party in Manly. My friend had bought Dean’s debut album Messy on record as a gift for his girlfriend. As he pulled it from the magenta sleeve, Olivia’s signature gold tooth flashed at me from the middle of her perfectly blurry portrait. My friend grinned at me as he positioned the record and lowered the needle. “Trust me, you’re gonna love this.”

Fast-forward nearly four years and Olivia Dean’s music has been embedded into my day-to-day and big life moments. A live band covered Dive while those same friends who introduced me to her music signed their marriage certificate. She has soundtracked road trips, housewarmings and dance parties in the living room with my toddler. And last September, as I shakily picked up a pregnancy test with a very faint but unmistakable second line, her collaboration with Sam Fender, Rein Me In, was filling our kitchen and spilling out onto the balcony. Forever when I hear that song the feeling will come back to me: the seasons changing, the weather warming, and finding out I was going to have another baby.

The same week I discovered I was pregnant, tickets for Olivia Dean’s Sydney arena tour went on sale. My two sisters and I spent the morning on FaceTime, all of us waiting in the online queue, desperate not to miss out. We were delighted to secure three tickets, and the year-long countdown began.

Now here we are, two months out. That positive pregnancy test has turned into a beautiful, chunky three-month-old baby with the best smile and the sweetest temperament. Having moved from inner-city Sydney to the Central Coast, I knew attending the concert would require some logistical planning. Afterpay Arena (formerly Qudos Bank Arena) has some understandably strict bag policies, so I sent an email explaining that I would have a young baby with me, and wanted to check that a pram and a nappy bag would be allowed through by security.

The response was prompt and positive. A pram would be allowed in but would need to be left in the cloakroom. No drama. A small bag with nappies and wipes would be permitted, as long as it wasn’t a backpack. Very considerate. But the clincher was in the very first line of the reply: “Thank you for your enquiry. For the Olivia Dean event, all patrons must hold a valid ticket for entry, regardless of age.”

I read it several times to be sure, and there was no mistaking what they were saying. Babies are welcome but they need their own ticket.

I hadn’t even thought to ask if my baby would be allowed in. Because, well, he’s a baby. He’ll be less than five months old on the day of the concert. Our tickets are seated and he’ll be strapped to my body the whole time. Because he can’t sit. Because he’s a baby.

Now, I should note that if leaving him at home with my husband was an option, I would happily take it. How anyone chooses to feed their baby is completely personal, and breastfeeding is all that is working for us at the moment. To separate my infant from my body would be to deprive him of sustenance for the seven-ish hours it will take me to get to, attend, and get home from the concert. I quite like my baby, so I won’t be doing that.

The only other option currently available to me is to miss out on one of my favourite artist’s concerts, which I have been looking forward to for more than a year, because I didn’t purchase a ticket for my unborn child when they went on sale.

I can’t quite work out how to make sense of this. I know we are living in a time of bottles and daycare and nannies, and I think all of those things are wonderful and have their place. But on the flip side, a mother should still be allowed to choose to have her baby close, no matter the context, particularly if that baby is breastfed.

In November 2025, Olivia Dean famously pressured Ticketmaster into issuing partial refunds to fans who bought inflated resale tickets, and forced future resale tickets to be capped at the original price. I can’t help wondering what she might have to say about a stadium demanding a seated ticket for a baby.

I’m acutely aware of how our culture isolates mothers by being utterly intolerant to the inconveniences caused by children and babies in public spaces. I could write a whole other piece about that. But this is a far less complicated, borderline laughable conversation.

My five-month-old baby, who will be strapped to my body, is absolutely allowed into the Afterpay Arena for Olivia Dean’s stadium tour as his first concert. He’s even allowed a pram and a nappy bag in the cloak room. He just needs to make sure to buy his own ticket first.

**Bethany Williams is a writer who lives on the NSW Central Coast. **