HIGH ON LOVE
GETAWAY REPORTER CHARLI ROBINSON AND HER RACING DRIVER PARTNER LIAM TALBOT INTRODUCE THEIR MUCH-LOVED NEW ADDITION ... AND HINT A SIBLING COULD BE ON THE CARDS
They say there is no more revealing test of a woman’s true personality than when she is in labour.
But if you’re wanting to know whether the eternally sunny media darling Charli Robinson has a well-hidden dark core, or even let the odd expletive slip during her 15 hours of drug-free labouring, you’ll be disappointed.
Even her obstetrician told her she shouldn’t be so happy.
“That’s my Hi-5 in me,” Charli laughs. The former children’s group performer, radio personality and Getaway reporter is feeding her new daughter Kensington Claire as she speaks, doting partner racing car driver Liam Talbot at her side.
Like all euphoric first-time parents, high on instant love, they are recounting every detail of Kensy’s unexpected arrival four weeks early and how she has flooded their hearts.
“The whole pregnancy had been textbook all the way through,” Charli says.
“But at 2am on Boxing Day, the textbook went out the window,” Liam laughs.
The couple had enjoyed a lovely Christmas Day. Charli’s dad had talked them out of spending Christmas with Charli’s parents in Port Stephens, advising them to stay close to home – you never know with babies, after all.
With presents still scattered and plans to buy all their baby goods at the Boxing Day sales, on Christmas night they watched the perennial festive season movie Elf and went to bed.
At 2am, Charli woke to her waters breaking.
“I was planning to do a hypno-birthing course but I was a bit naughty and was saving it until January,” Charli says.
“When my waters broke, I thought, oh no, I haven’t done the course yet. It was the first thing I said to Liam.”
They rang Charli’s parents. Charli’s mum doesn’t fly so they hastily packed their car for the trip north they had pencilled in for a month’s time.
“I think I was in a bit of denial to start with. Maybe it was just a mistake but 18 hours later, labour started and that went for 15-and-a-half hours.
“It wasn’t the pain. It was the exhaustion. I’d only slept for four hours on Christmas night. I wanted to ask can we just stop, go back to sleep and come back?”
Liam didn’t leave Charli’s side. He watched some NBA games on his iPad, took sustenance in a Coca-Cola and did his best to provide support and encouragement.
“Let me tell you, he was so funny,” Charli says. “Liam went to the toilet so often like his waters had broken, too. The nurses and midwives said, ‘If only he could lactate as well’.”
Then at 5.27pm on December 27, Kensington made her entrance, weighing 2.4kg (5lb 4 oz on the old scale) and measuring 38cm (15 inches) top to toe.
Liam cut the umbilical cord but Charli doesn’t remember that. What she does remember is holding Kensington Claire in her arms for the first time.
“I’ve never experienced anything like that,” she says. “That you can love someone straight away, the deepest, purest love. It was amazing.”
Now for the story of the name. “When we found out we were pregnant, we came up with a boy’s name straight away but we were struggling for so long for a girl’s name,” Charli says.
Liam lost his father, Queensland mining figure Ken Talbot, in a plane crash in Africa almost nine years ago and Charli said they played around with a few suggestions incorporating Ken’s name.
“It just grew on us,” Charli says. “I loved that it’s a strong name and still elegant. From my Hi-5 days, I met so many children and I didn’t know another Kensington.”
They kept the name a secret, despite much prodding from family and friends. The second name came about from Charli’s mum trying to guess it.
“I’d given her only a couple of clues and one day she said to me, ‘I’ve got it. You’re going to call her Claire.’ I said, ‘why would we call our baby Claire?’ but it was such a simple name after Kensington.
“I said, ‘Mum, you’ve just given our baby her second name’.”
Despite choosing the name some time before, Liam admits it was a little nerve wracking say it out loud for the first time.
“The funny thing was no one in Liam’s family got it,” Charli says. “They didn’t get the link until we told them.”
Charli was relieved she was able to breastfeed straight away and Kensy has been a “very healthy eater” from the start.
“I think it took me a couple of days to sink in that we actually had her,” Charli says. “We’d told her so many times we couldn’t wait to meet her – Liam would say it to my tummy. I think we said it too much.”
Charli’s parents revelled in the task of buying the baby goodies for their first grandchild – “we’d only bought the wallpaper and the cot,” Charli laughs – and her parents stayed for three weeks to lend a hand.
“I don’t think we were prepared for how much more emotion you feel,” Charli says. “For a while, crying was all I did, crying over nothing. I was happy and the tears were still coming.
“The nurses said, ‘oh, that’s normal, that’s just your milk coming in’. I cried and cried when Mum and Dad had to leave. It was wonderful having them with us.”
Charli and Liam decided on a short-term move to Brisbane to be closer to Liam’s mum and sister who’ve been on hand to help.
“Liam’s sister Courtney has been bringing us meals,” Charli says. “She’s so good. When people had babies, I had no idea. I’d bring them a big bunch of flowers. A freezer full of lasagne is so much more beneficial.”
The three have fallen into a little routine. Liam is back training for the start of the racing season. His first race is the Superloop Adelaide 500, starting on February 28.
When he comes home in the afternoon, he opens “the daddy-daughter day spa”, looking
“I DON’T THINK WE WERE PREPARED FOR HOW MUCH MORE EMOTION YOU FEEL. FOR A WHILE, CRYING WAS ALL I DID ...”
after bath time.
“It’s very easy bonding for me to do,” he says. “Then she falls asleep on my chest and we have a little doze.”
Charli and Kensy are still establishing their feeding routines. Charli is celebrating a two-and-a-half-hour stretch between night feeds and says she understands now why her mother bought her five or six new pairs of pyjamas before Kensy was born.
“Some days I’m in my PJs all day,” she says. “I might put on a fresh pair for when Liam’s coming home from training.”
“Yes, that catches my attention,” he laughs. “It really is a whole new world,” Charli says.
Despite that, Charli is already looking to an, albeit soft, return to her travel reporting gig with Channel 9’s Getaway program.
“They’ve been so good,” she says. “They’ve got me filming on the Gold Coast in a week or so and they’re fitting the schedule around me.
“It will be short days and very flexible. My parents are coming up and Liam will be there but I can already tell it’s going to hurt my heart when I have to leave her. I’ve been with her every second since she was born.”
Charli says she’ll take guidance from other mums who work on the program.
“It’s a very family-friendly production company,” she says. “They’ve left it to me to tell them when I feel ready to start doing trips again.
“I see the way other women I work with do it. Some take their kids with them and they’re extras in the shoot.
“I’ll take it as it comes. It really is a dream job, just incredible and I absolutely love it.
“I think I’ll stick to baby-friendly spots to start with and we’ll see what happens from there.”
It begs the question as to whether Liam’s approach to his work will be any different now he is a father. It’s old racetrack lore that having a child can lose a driver a tenth of a second and extinguish their “edge” on the track. But Liam is confident having Kensington won’t affect his driving.
He recorded some of the best results of his career while Charli was pregnant, winning two races in a row and finishing second in the next race despite being pushed off the track and having to fight his way home.
They’re already planning to take Kensington trackside when the time is right, with a good set of ear muffs, of course. “When I was pregnant, I was always at the racetrack,” Charli says. “She was usually a calm baby but that’s when I’d feel her kick when there was the roaring of the engines.
“She was probably picking up on my nervous energy, too.”
There’s already talk of adding to the family, although Charli didn’t expect the topic to surface quite so soon. When she woke up in her hospital room just hours after giving birth, Liam asked her a curious question.
“I said, ‘Do you like babies?’” Liam says. “She looked at me a bit funny, then I said ‘Do you want to go halves in another one?’”
Charli is more than open to the idea. “It would be nice for Kensy to have a sibling,” Charli says. “She came about so nice and easily for us and I know that doesn’t happen for everyone, or happen every time. We would have to move it. I’m 38 now.
“It’s something we’ll have to think of in the next year or so. I might even get to have a couple of champagnes first. It’s been so long. “But if we only have her, I will be overjoyed and so proud.”