‘This has always felt like the most bad-ass thing I could ever do’: The Project host Rachel Corbett reveals the birth of her first child

After announcing her pregnancy on-air, Rachel Corbett – regular presenter on The Project and head of Nova podcasts – has opened up about giving birth to her first child, and why she chose to become a mum on her own terms.

When The Project’s Rachel Corbett signed off to go on maternity leave in February, the occasional host was – in her typically hilarious fashion – bluntly honest about her fears. “What if I’m miserable?” she asked her colleagues. “What if I hate it? What if I’ve made a terrible mistake?”

Co-host Hamish Macdonald stepped in to explain that Corbett was having a child on her own and to reassure her – and the show’s viewers – that she was going to be an incredible mum.

Nearly four months later, as she cradles her baby Olivia in her arms, Corbett, 42, reveals that “incredible” was the last thing she felt as she recovered from a caesarean, struggled to breastfeed and was so exhausted that she almost let her newborn daughter slip from her hands.

“Going into [motherhood], I knew it was going to be hard, but I’m a really resilient person,” she tells Stellar. “I’ve been through a lot in my life and I’m quite good at dealing with tough stuff, but nothing can prepare you for what it’s like. You’ve got this little being who doesn’t care that you haven’t had any sleep. You have to tend to their every need, even if you’ve got nothing left in the tank.”

New mum Rachel Corbett has opened up about the birth of her first child, Olivia. See the full shoot inside Stellar, out today. Picture: Cara O'Dowd for Stellar

While Corbett gave birth in a private hospital, she was disappointed with the lack of post-partum support and instruction, particularly when it was clear Olivia was hungry but Corbett’s breastmilk had yet to come in. “There were a few moments where I was so tired I caught myself almost dropping her,” she recalls. “On the second night I was on my own and I rang the bell to get some help and I got a really unhelpful midwife who just said, ‘This is just what night two is like.’”

Corbett says she can understand why women give up on breastfeeding, but she’s glad she persevered. Once home, she used the money she had saved to hire a night midwife to help out and a doula during the day to help her with breastfeeding. “That was really game changing because being on your own, you don’t have that support at home and somebody to hand the kid off to,” she says.

Having cared for her mother (who died in 2015 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease), and as the primary support for her dad (who has dementia and is now in aged care), Corbett knew that raising a child on her own would be challenging without family support. But having frozen her eggs in her mid-30s around the time that a long-term relationship came to an end, she also knew that, in her early 40s, she was ready to be a parent.

With a steady career as the head of podcasts and digital content at Nova Entertainment and a mindset that a relationship can be forged at any time, Corbett explored the process of becoming a single mum. “This has never felt like a consolation prize,” she explains. “I would hear other women talk and it would sound like they felt they’d failed or that it was sad, and I just never felt that way. You could go on 7000 dates and never find someone you want to spend your life with. Why am I going to put my time and effort into that when I know I can have a baby? I have the oven.”

See the full shoot with Rachel Corbett inside Stellar, out today. Picture: Sam Bisso for Stellar

When it came to choosing donor sperm, which she sought from overseas, Corbett focused on medical history and something about the donor that would indicate a kind and caring nature. As she pored over the paperwork, she was struck by a sweet childhood anecdote shared in one of the donor files; to anyone else, it might have read as embarrassing or silly, but to her, it was beautiful. Equally touching for Corbett was the realisation that the day she began injections to prepare for insemination was her late mum’s birthday: “She would have been so proud I was doing it on my own.”

The same sensitivity that makes Corbett a popular addition to The Project (and a podcasting trailblazer) underpins her instincts as she embarks on motherhood.

While the former Triple M radio host is happy to pose with Olivia for this Stellar shoot, she won’t be posting images that show her daughter’s face. “I love seeing pictures of other’s people’s kids, but social media is not a priority for me,” she explains. “I also felt that, eventually, I’ll have a conversation with her about why social media is not important and she could turn around and say, ‘Well, hang on, you’ve been putting photos of me on your Instagram for a good eight years of my life.’”

Corbett plans to be back onscreen and working at Nova once Olivia is four months old – in the meantime, she’s revelling in the relationship she’s building with her daughter. And after a tough decade of caring for her ailing parents, that she notes wryly was “like living the life of a 67-year-old”, she has become more robust and grateful. The understanding and comfort she showed her mum as she struggled with the indignities of Alzheimer’s may have left Corbett depleted – and in need of a break before she embarked on pregnancy – but it has also afforded her perspective. Instead of feeling trapped at home with a newborn, she’s been able to surrender to it and recognise that her career has rarely allowed her to enjoy domesticity.

Aside from joking that she wouldn’t mind “palming her off sometimes”, Corbett doesn’t feel she’s lacking anything in her life with Olivia. “Not once have I wished there was someone here doing this with me,” she says. “If I had to choose between being a mum or having a relationship again, I’d choose mum. This has always felt like the most bad-ass thing I could ever do. I feel excited and really proud.”

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Originally published as ‘This has always felt like the most bad-ass thing I could ever do’: The Project host Rachel Corbett reveals the birth of her first child