Nat Barr: ‘I thought I was a bad mum’
Sunrise star Natalie Barr reveals how she learned not to buy into working mother guilt as she raised two children while maintaining her job on TV.
Newsreader Natalie Barr explains how work became a saving grace as she raised her two children — and why women should never feel pressured to get motherhood “right”.
I’d been reporting for Seven News for years and had just been given the Late News reading job when I fell pregnant in 2001.
I started vomiting the week I found out and I didn’t stop until the day after I delivered. I threw up all day every day and was hospitalised several times with dehydration.
I put on 20 kilos each pregnancy because eating carbs seemed to help a bit. I’d eat biscuits in the ad breaks to stem the nausea, then run for the bathroom after every bulletin.
Meeting my babies was amazing in many ways.
When I was six months pregnant with my first son, my dad died from a sudden heart attack. So when Lachlan was born a few months later, I was still mourning Dad. I was so desperately sad. And so desperately happy that I had Lachlan.
When I had Hunter three-and-a-half years later, it was so different. He came out blue and had to be revived so that was a bit traumatic. But we had two happy, healthy little men and we loved them more than life itself.
I really didn’t enjoy staying at home, so I went back to work when each of them was about three months old. I was ready. I missed having a purpose outside the home. I felt that work was part of my identity and I didn’t want to stop.
As an organised, independent woman, I found it extremely hard to deal with the lack of sleep. For 18 months we struggled and I was very jealous of women who talked about their babies sleeping even halfway through the night.
Lachlan slept for about 45 minutes at a time and it nearly killed me. I remember being twice tested for postnatal depression and doctors telling me that because I didn’t want to harm my baby, I wasn’t suffering from it.
Work was my saviour in those days. It was the thing I was good at.
I refuse to feel guilty for being away from my children. When I’m at work I concentrate on doing a good job. When I travel for work, I go wholeheartedly and don’t dwell on leaving them.
I have a phone full of babysitters’ numbers. If I get the call to go away for work, sometimes within hours of a terrorist attack or a leadership spill, for example, I frantically call and call until I find somebody, or I tell the boss I can’t go.
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I have worked at the Seven Network for 24 years through two pregnancies and babies, who are now 17 and 13, and the company has been amazingly family-friendly.
If I need time off, they say run, don’t walk, and we’ll pick up the pieces. On the flip side, I feel like I’ve worked hard for them over the years, too. I think it works both ways.
I’ve forgotten dress-up days at school, I’ve forgotten to pick them up from school. I found Lachlan on a road once when he disappeared from a friend’s place as a toddler.
I’ve yelled, I’ve cried, I’ve booked them into daycare so I could just go home to a house that was silent.
There were so many days that I found it so very hard being a mum. I’ve also had some moments where I’ve thought: “I’m not very good at this. I am a bad mum, maybe I shouldn’t have become one.”
Do what’s right for you and your family. Don’t apologise. Don’t feel guilty. Don’t listen too much to other people who aren’t like you.
I was induced after vomiting for 40 weeks because the obstetrician said, “I think you’ve had enough.” I had epidurals. I only breastfed for a couple of months. I went back to work after a few months.
All those things worked for me. But at times I got very stressed and upset listening to other people’s opinions on these things. Everyone’s juggle is different.
I hope to teach my sons that Mum’s job is just as important as Dad’s. And that they should show all women the same respect that they show their mum.
That being part of a family is wonderful, and that not everyone is lucky enough to feel that, but that it also has to be worked at, physically and mentally, and to respect each member.
And Mum and Dad are very lucky they found each other 30 years ago and that they still love each other.
If you can find that, whenever it comes along in life, hang on to it, never let it go and never, ever take it for granted.
This is an edited extract from The Juggle by Steph Adams and Samantha Brett (Penguin, $39.99), which is out now.
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