“I know what it’s like to need help”
What should have been one of the happiest times of her life was filled with dark days and nights which challenged her sanity. Still, Carrie Bickmore tells Tiffany Dunk, not only has she come out the other side but she’s happier than ever.
Snuggling with her six-monthold daughter Adelaide, to the casual observer Carrie Bickmore appears to be a woman who has it all. But the slight shadows lurking beneath The Project host’s animated blue eyes speak to the reality of what, she now admits in a raw and honest conversation with The Weekly, has been a difficult time.
A baby who failed to thrive, an undiagnosed illness, endless sleepless nights and a fear of postnatal depression made for a fraught time for the television star, whose return to work was put on hold as she battled to hold things together at home.
Before Adelaide – or Addie as the family affectionately calls her – arrived, motherhood had always come easily. Having given birth to her eldest, Ollie, at 25, she’d breezed through those early days of feeding, nappy changing and more.
“Genuinely, honestly, I never heard him cry,” Carrie marvels of her now-11-year-old, who arrived at a time when she needed the calm. Her husband Greg Lange was in the throes of a terminal fight with brain cancer, passing away in 2010 when their son was just three years old. “Ollie didn’t fuss. There was a lot going on in my life at that time and I think he just had to be good. And he was.”
Evie, her daughter with new partner Chris Walker, was equally effortless, Carrie marvels. So when they decided to add a third child to their brood, she knew she’d handle it just as easily.
“I think, arrogantly, I was like, ‘I’ve had two, it can’t be that hard to have another one,’” she chuckles darkly, with the benefit of hindsight. “By then there’s already chaos, there’s already mess, so what’s adding another one? But it was pretty full on. And it certainly challenged me in ways I didn’t know were possible.”
Those challenges were immediate and left the 38-year-old questioning if she was suffering from postnatal depression. Addie couldn’t settle while feeding, was projectile vomiting, wasn’t sleeping.
“She wasn’t a screamy baby,” Carrie recalls, explaining why it took so long to find out reflux was behind the
troubles. “All I knew was that I literally couldn’t put her down without her being uncomfortable. So I held her pretty much for six weeks straight, which meant I didn’t sleep.”
Also not sleeping was four-year-old Evie, who wasn’t taking to the notion of a little sister in the way that Carrie had hoped for.
“I thought she’d love having a little baby around because she’s so maternal and has all her own little babies in cots,” says Carrie. “But I didn’t take into account that I’d have something attached to me 24/7 and that Evie couldn’t get access.
“With a newborn, you can usually put them down and they sleep for a few hours at a time, so you can draw or play or whatever. But I couldn’t really do anything, so Evie found it hard. She stopped sleeping, she stopped all the naps and it was like, ‘Oh God, not you!’ I remember nights where Chris was wheeling Evie around in her pram at 10 o’clock at night, willing her to go to sleep. It was a lot.”
Finally, when Adelaide was seven weeks old, they were given the reflux diagnosis and medication to help combat it. But the troubles didn’t stop there.
“I realised I didn’t have enough milk and I had to wean her, which I hadn’t really thought about because I’d been fine before – I mean, with Ollie I could have fed an entire nation,” Carrie says. “But this time I didn’t. So she was hungry and she wasn’t putting on weight which is stressful. We had about three or four months of navigating her putting on weight and then the feeding.”
In her darkest days, Carrie admits, she struggled to maintain a semblance of sanity while trying to take the pressure off and do whatever was necessary to keep both her baby fed and her mental health intact. “I wonder, if this baby had been my first, if I would have ever had any more,” she jokes. But finally things turned a corner and not only did
Addie start responding to treatment, but she won the hearts of everyone in the family – even her big sister Evie.
“She’s really cuddly and loves to be held and she’s just very tactile,” Carrie beams. “Now she’s laughing and smiling and making noises and the kids love her. So it’s great now, but it was just nothing like I was expecting.”
Through her TV appearances,
Nova radio show and her social media accounts, Carrie has always been open, letting audiences in with a refreshing honesty about all areas of her life.
It’s what has endeared her to the Australian public since she first hit our television screens on Rove Live in 2006. And it’s what continues to endear her – this year she has won yet another TV Week Logie nomination for Most Popular Presenter, despite having been on maternity leave for much of the voting period. Meanwhile, Carrie returns to The Project desk on July 8, in order to celebrate its 10-year anniversary this month.
Project co-host Peter Helliar has had “the pleasure of sitting next to Carrie” since her very first days on Rove Live. And, he tells The Weekly, her continued popularity is no surprise to anyone she works with – nor is her decision to speak openly about the struggles of those early days of parenthood.
“I’ve spoken to a lot of women who have said it’s meant a lot to them,” he says. “Mums with new babies who are up in the middle of the night, to read that Carrie is going through the same thing, it does actually mean something. She’s very good at reaching out, and also at not hiding it if she’s struggling.”
“I think everybody should seek help when they need it,” Carrie says, when asked about her willingness to speak about seeking therapy during her
darkest hours. “For me, it’s a part of life. I’ve gone to see someone when I’ve been in a good place.”
She’s also found that opening up publicly has had a knock-on effect – by voicing her fears and frustrations she’s found a support network in the workplace, in friendships, with her family and with the Australian public.
“I purposefully let people in,” she says. “I think that’s because I know then, when I have a tough time, they will know and they’ll be there ... People come up to me who I’ve never met and are so wonderful and supportive and encouraging. They’re often going through their own journey and they’re like, ‘Thanks for the money you raise’ or ‘Thanks for sharing your story so now I don’t feel so alone’. There have been many times when I’ve felt I’ve collectively had the nation’s arms around me, as well as those who are physically beside me holding my hand.”
It should be said, she gives just as good as she gets to those around her. After losing her husband Peter Baikie to cancer in 2017, entertainment presenter Angela Bishop has revealed that Carrie was a constant reassuring presence, offering practical advice about how she could better prepare her daughter, Amelia, for life without her father. “She’s been incredible, she’s just been a really good friend,” Angela told The Weekly.
Also lauding Carrie’s kindness is
Fifi Box, who – as we go to print – is preparing to welcome her second child through what has been an illness-ridden pregnancy. “Carrie’s friendship is invaluable to me. She’s supported me through lots of ups and downs – in particular my recent IVF and pregnancy journey. She has supported me from day one,” Fifi tells us of the friend she calls “loyal, genuine and generous”. “She makes time to support friends and even be there for complete strangers who reach out to her.”
“When you have her ear, you have her ear,” adds Peter, who has also been the recipient of Carrie’s support. “She is listening, she is not distracted, she’s not looking over your shoulder or at her watch. She’s listening, she’s invested and she wants to help.”
When we bring up the praise her friends have lavished on her, it’s the only time Carrie looks visibly uncomfortable during our time together, despite the variety of heavy topics covered.
“I enjoy looking after them as much as they enjoy looking after me,” she shrugs awkwardly. “I know what it’s like to need people and to need help. So I almost feel like I need to pay that back in a way.”
Paying it back can also be seen in the work she has done with her Carrie’s Beanies 4 Brain Cancer Foundation, which saw her awarded an Order of Australia on June 9. Launched with an emotional speech while accepting her Gold Logie back in 2015, Carrie then had what she felt was a grand ambition of raising $1 million. Today, she has raised
$12 million, and counting.
It’s a project that has a special resonance for Ollie, whose time with his father Greg was cut far too short by his death from the disease.
“Ollie wears his beanie proudly and it’s a lovely legacy for his dad
and a positive way to be connected. Whenever we are out we’ll see someone wearing our beanie and he’ll say, ‘Mum, look!’, or he’ll go up and say, ‘Hey, thanks for buying one.’ I can see the pride in him.”
Greg remains a constant part of the conversations in their home, says Carrie, and he always will.
“Anyone who has ever lost someone will tell you that they may not physically be there but they’ll stay in your life forever. And Ollie is so like him in so many ways. I often think, ‘God, I wish Greg was here so I could ask him how the hell to parent!’
Surely he’d have some insight.”
Does the constant presence of Greg ever make it difficult for her partner Chris? “You always bring your past with you into your future and that’s just the reality, that’s life,” she says. “The sort of family I grew up in never had this perfect little, ‘Mum, Dad, two kids’. I never aimed for or expected perfect. It’s not straightforward but I don’t really know anything different.”
Carrie’s parents Jennie and Brian separated when she was “three or four”. In her native Adelaide, Carrie’s father helped launch radio network Austereo, mum Jennie a teacher. The split, she says, was amicable, but life would separate a young Carrie from her dad as, a year later, Jennie took up the offer for an exchange teaching post in America. “I look back and think, ‘How on earth did she travel to the other side of the world with a five-year-old when she didn’t know a soul?” Carrie marvels. “But mum says it was one of the most incredible years of her life.”
Upon their return to Adelaide, Jennie was looking through her kitchen window when love struck a second time. Their next door neighbour, ironically also called Brian, was ironing his shirts in his laundry. “Oh my God,” Jennie exclaimed in excitement, “a man who irons!” Romance soon blossomed and the trio moved to Perth where Brian’s two daughters from a previous marriage, who were four and five years older than Carrie, resided.
“It was crazy growing up in a step family,” Carrie reflects with a smile. “It has a lot of challenges, a lot of ups and a lot of downs and manoeuvring all those relationships. My mum and stepdad were trying to grow their relationship while getting three girls who weren’t related to fall in love with each other, which we all did.”
Despite the distance Carrie remained close to her father, and after university she moved to Melbourne, where her dad was residing.
“One of the reasons I came here was because I wanted to spend a chunk of time with my dad,” she says. “I thought it would be a year or two and I never left!”
Sadly, her stepdad Brian passed away 12 years ago, and today Jennie has joined her daughter and ex-husband in calling Melbourne home.
“People come up to me who I’ve never met and are so supportive.”
“Mum’s had a really tough time,” Carrie says. “They were madly in love until the day he died but she’s the most resilient person I’ve ever met. And my mum and dad are very close. I spend heaps of time with them together. I have so much respect for both of them. Going through a divorce is an incredibly hard time. And then navigating life, sharing a child – the way they did it was with so much respect for each other. For me as a child it made it easy.”
Having two grandparents nearby to share the load is also making life easier today as she navigates going back to work. While Adelaide’s tricky start meant Carrie took far more time out than she originally intended, it became a blessing when it came to spending time with Ollie, who is nearing his teenage years.
Carrie has been on The Project since Ollie was 18 months old. Previously, out of necessity, she says she would try to fit in all their vital conversations when she had the time, as opposed to when he was ready and available to talk. This extended leave has seen her change that focus.
“I can’t just expect that when I get home from The Project at 8.15pm and he’s sitting on the couch that I can go, ‘So tell me about your day, what’s happening?’” she says of her recent epiphany. “He’s been home for four hours from school, he’s tired and not in the mood to talk. But having been around and driving him to footy training and sitting with him at the dinner table, I’m catching snippets of his life that I didn’t have before. He’s getting to that age where he’s really benefited from having me around.”
Her next challenge, she says, will be how to keep that balance as she returns to our screens. But, she says, a far more relaxed Carrie will be returning to The Project and, she promises, it’s one who won’t let work define her.
“I think I’m a different person now,” she muses of the changes that have been wrought since she first sat, paralysed with fear, at that desk
10 long years ago. “There are a lot of things about me that are still the same – I still have self-doubt and I’m still stressed about making sure we’re doing the best show we can make – I’ve never been someone who just phones it in. But I also care a lot less about what people think of me now. I care a lot less about being perfect. I skip along the top a little more.”
Finding that sense of peace has been hard won and it’s a quality she hopes to encourage in her own brood as they grow up.
“We all spend a lot of time searching for happiness and I think that’s a really misleading thing because we all have an idea of what ‘happiness’ is and it’s hard to get to,” explains Carrie. “I think ‘contentedness’ is a better word. It doesn’t need to be such a perfect place. It’s more of a quiet time of inner calm and content that I want for my kids.”
“I care a lot less about being perfect. I skip along the top.”