“I know what it’s like to need help”
Snuggling with her six-month-old 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
