'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.

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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 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.”