‘MY NEW PASSION’
Libby Trickett
With just days to go before giving birth, Libby Trickett is desperate to know whether she’s having a boy or girl. “I have been dying to find out! I’ve been feeling really nesty this pregnancy, which I’ve never felt before,” says the fourtimes Olympic gold medal winning swimmer, laughing. “I have this need to clean things which is not one of my personality traits at all! I just need to know, do I start culling the girl clothes stuff or start buying boy stuff ? Every time
I go to the obstetrician I have to tell my husband not to let me ask because I don’t trust myself.”
Already mum to two girls,
Poppy, 4, and 20-month-old Edwina, Trickett’s life as a full-time mum – and now author with the release of her memoir Beneath the Surface – couldn’t be more different from her former career as an elite athlete.
Her down-to-earth and funny Instagram feed might feature an occasional photo of a heavily pregnant Trickett lifting weights, but it mostly shows her very normal family life in suburban Brisbane with plenty of chaos and jokes about “poonamis” thrown into the mix.
“I can’t be anything other than what I am. For me, the way that I manage and cope with the demands of parenthood is by trying to poke fun at it. [And] it’s so lovely to hear feedback from people saying, ‘that was me yesterday!’.”
It was in this space that Trickett first realised the power of opening up about the parts of motherhood she found challenging.
“There was this onset of social media where it’s all very curated with kids wrapped up in beautiful white blankets and I was like, that’s not my experience, and I started to talk about how difficult I found the transition to motherhood,” she says.
The response was overwhelmingly positive. And as she began opening up more, Trickett realised that seven years after retiring, she might have finally found something to replace her love of swimming.
“My passion is mental health. I would love to have some tangible study behind me so I can understand more [so] I’m hoping to study counselling next year,” she tells WHO.
As well as her swimming journey and relationship with husband Luke, Trickett writes in her memoir with heartbreaking honesty about her mental health challenges, in particular the depression she experienced after having her first daughter. It began when Poppy was 4 months old
“I can’t be anything other than what I am”
and went from sleeping well at night to waking every 45 minutes.
“Nothing can prepare you for chronic sleep deprivation,” says the 34-year-old. “You try to do your best and read all the books that say your baby will sleep eventually. [But my] mindset made me go, ‘If I just loved her enough, if I was enough for her, she would sleep’. It crept up on me, but it also felt like a steep decline into mental illness and into postnatal depression. It felt like I was the only one in the world struggling to cope with my baby.”
In Beneath the Surface, Trickett describes in unflinching detail her lowest moment, when she found herself hysterically shouting at her baby. “I was so angry at the world.
I was angry at her. I was angry at me. I was angry at my husband and his useless nipples. I was angry at everyone basically who came into contact with me.”
Realising she was at rock bottom, Trickett sought help. She started seeing a psychologist, contacted a baby sleep consultant, began a regular exercise routine and slowly began to recover. When her PND symptoms reappeared after having Edwina, Trickett sought help immediately and is now ready do the same if necessary after the
arrival of this third baby.
But despite experiencing such intense lows, Trickett doesn’t regret her illness. “As hard as it was going through PND and having that experience, I’m grateful for it, because it’s given me a better understanding of myself.”
Trickett retired from swimming in 2013, and while she admits to still fantasising about a swimming comeback, since becoming a mum she has learnt to be kinder to herself and her body than she was during her heyday of 35-hour a week training schedules.
“I’m so proud I’ve been able to grow these babies, I’m so proud I achieved the Olympic gold medals and there are so many things I want to be able to do with my body in the future that I just want to take care of it.”