TasWeekend: Mum’s the word in the best job ever
As Bonnie Paine knows, being a mum isn’t always easy but it’s one of the most rewarding jobs she’s ever done.
Lifestyle
Don't miss out on the headlines from Lifestyle. Followed categories will be added to My News.
This week we celebrate four very different Tassie mums and discover that while mothering is rarely always easy ... it’s still one of the most rewarding jobs going around.
BONNIE PAINE
Nurse, mum of Milla and Charlie, and wife of Australian cricket captain Tim Paine
HER Instagram page brims with glamorous images snapped at red carpet events, awards dinners and in exotic overseas holiday destinations – and her 50,000+ followers can’t get enough.
But while Bonnie Paine, wife of Australian cricketer Tim Paine, enjoys the occasional glitz, glamour and travel perks that come with being married to a sporting star, the 31-year-old is also determined to keep things real.
Because like any mum with two small children, Bonnie is all too aware that day-to-day life doesn’t always look as magical as social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram would have us believe.
“I love to get that perfect picture as much as any other mum,” Bonnie admits.
“But the reality of actually getting that is so rare and so slim – my kids are two and three. I’m not a perfect mum … and I don’t have perfect kids either.”
One recent example of her eagerness to keep things real was during a family holiday to Noosa last month.
Instagram showcases a smiling picture of Bonnie, Tim and daughter Milla – who turns four next month – standing together on a beach. Tim has towels and a bucket of beach toys tucked under his arm while Bonnie holds Milla on her hip.
It looks like the perfect holiday snap – one worth sticking on the fridge or adding to the family photo album. But read Bonnie’s photo caption and swipe through the other images in the same Instagram post, and you quickly realise that all was not as it seemed. After all, where was two-year-old Charlie?
“Family time – oh how I’d missed you,” Bonnie posted, before adding that “Charlie was face down in the sand, throwing a little tantie at this stage … gotta love holidays with toddlers.”
The post came complete with an image of cranky Charlie, lying in the sand, hands covering his ears – and no doubt had parents across the globe nodding in solidarity, especially those who have ever attempted to travel with young children.
Not one to shy away from a challenge, Bonnie travelled interstate and overseas with her kids to support her husband’s cricket pursuits prior to COVID.
She has often been photographed on the sidelines at matches, with a child or two in her arms, and has also been known to take the children to functions, including an event where they were photographed with Prime Minister Scott Morrison at Sydney’s Kirribilli House at the start of last year.
“I guess becoming a mum gave me so much purpose in my life – I didn’t feel like I had much purpose before I had my children,” Bonnie reveals.
“Now they’re at this age it’s so nice to watch them play and laugh, and cuddle with them on the couch and look at their little hands and feet. It’s really rewarding to spend quality time with them and watch them learn.”
But Bonnie, a registered nurse, admits it isn’t always easy.
Which is why she thinks Mother’s Day is such a vital date to celebrate.
“It’s the most important holiday for me, because I feel like it’s the hardest job in the world and I feel like mums should be celebrated,” she says. “And we should celebrate all sorts of mums, like foster mums and grandmothers, and friends who help to raise children. Because it is a hard job. Bloody hell, some days you feel pretty crap.”
Bonnie always knew parenthood would be harder having a husband who travels a lot for work. They married at Home Hill Winery in 2016 and started a family soon after.
Bonnie says the early days were particularly challenging.
Milla was just six months old when Bonnie’s beloved dad died and Tim was away a lot for cricket. And, soon after, Bonnie fell pregnant with Charlie and was then juggling two young children.
“It was really difficult in the beginning,” Bonnie recalls. “I went through some really hard postnatal depression. Tim was away all the time, my dad had passed away and I had two little kids and it was bloody tough.”
But things slowly improved.
“It’s a lot easier now that Charlie is getting to two-and-a-half,” Bonnie says. “He understands more and they play better together. I never thought I’d have two so close together, and it has definitely had its challenges, but it is nice now. I’m definitely starting to see the rewards.”
On Mother’s Day she will celebrate with a lazy breakfast with her family at their South Hobart home.
“I’ve kind of put the hard word on Tim that he has to plan something nice,” she laughs.
“Because the kids aren’t old enough to plan something nice.”
She expects the kids will bring home a little gift from daycare and Bonnie and her sister will also take their mum out for dinner.
“We’ll have breakfast together because when Tim’s home, that’s our thing,” Bonnie says.
“It’s kind of like my Mother’s Day present – Tim’s here so I can get away with not doing as much [around the house]. Then we’ll just get on with the day and spend it with family.”
Bonnie says while COVID had been a stressful time, with a lot of uncertainty about when Tim would play cricket, it had also been nice to have him home more.
He continues to travel back and forth between Tasmania and the mainland for various meetings and leadership roles, but Bonnie says at this stage the next tournament isn’t planned until summer.
And while beach holidays in Spain are lovely, Bonnie is content in Hobart for now and says she’s actually relieved in some ways that COVID has ruled out international family travel.
“It actually makes me happy that we don’t have to get on one of those long-haul flights with two young kids,” she says. “That is draining, and so difficult, so I’m kind of glad – as much as I love going away – that Tim is around and we don’t have that pressure.”
ALEXANDRA JOHNSON
Businesswoman and mum of Stella, Scarlett, Archie, Avalon and Atticus
ALEXANDRA Johnson’s first Mother’s Day was far from the joyful celebration she had imagined it would be.
Because rather than celebrating life as a first-time mum with her tiny baby, Stella, in her arms, the then 22-year-old spent Mother’s Day grieving the loss of her daughter, who died a few months earlier when she was just 10 days old.
“The first Mother’s Day without her was really, really horrendous,” Alexandra, who is now 37, recalls. “I still remember it so vividly. I worked at Hobart Skintech [as a beauty therapist] at the time and I didn’t give Mother’s Day two thoughts, but I should have. Because the day before Mother’s Day a whole group of mothers came in to pamper themselves. And it was like torture. There I was, listening to all these mums, talking about their kids and it was great for them. They had such a great time and I was really happy to be able to service them. But I was in a professional setting and I literally had to hold it together the whole day. It was extremely draining and I just fell to pieces when I got home.”
Stella was born on February 22, 2006. She was born prematurely (at 27 weeks) but Alexandra says the doctors were amazed by her size and how healthy she seemed.
But days later she contracted an infection that her tiny body was unable to fight.
“It was literally nine days of smooth sailing,” Alexandra recalls. “Everyone was saying she’s fabulous, she’s off everything, she’s just here to grow, she’s amazing. I was expecting some ups and downs, and the days were long and worrisome but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I went home that night really hopeful and confident and happy, and thought ‘Wow, we’re getting somewhere’.’’
But at 7am the next day she received a call from the hospital.
“They said, ‘Alex, could you come as soon as possible, Stella hasn’t had a good night’,” she recalls. “But I still didn’t get a sense of urgency. I thought, ‘She’ll be OK’, as it was only a few hours since I last saw her.
“But we got in there and they were working on her – resuscitating her. They asked us to step out for a minute, they were hoping to stabilise her and she’d be OK. But then they came back in 15 minutes and said ‘She’s going to die’.”
Alexandra says it was a difficult grieving process and a lot of people found the situation hard to understand.
“Technically you’re a mum, but you’re not seen by the world as a mum, you don’t have a baby to hold,” she explains. “It’s crazy, but time still passes.”
Stella would be 15 if she was still alive today. Alexandra and her husband Samm Harrington have since had four more children – Scarlett, 14, Archie, 12, Avalon, 10, and Atticus, 9.
Alexandra and Samm talk openly with their surviving children about Stella and they celebrate Stella’s birthday each year.
Alexandra believes it’s important to normalise death and infant loss.
“Remembering Stella and talking about Stella – yeah it hurts and yeah it’s hard but it’s also about acknowledging that she was here and she was part of our family and she did live,” she says.
“I enjoy hearing her name, I enjoy talking about her. In return it has taught our children a lot about how to go forward when you’re missing someone from your family.”
She recalls a visit to the supermarket once with her kids when the chatty cashier commented on the size of her family.
“The cashier said, ‘Oh, there are four of you’,” Alexandra recalls. “And one of the kids piped up and said, ‘No, there’s actually five of us. Our sister died’. And she didn’t know what to say.”
Alexandra is thankful for her children and the joy they bring her, even if the teenage years are already proving to be a challenge.
She and Samm own Toyworld in Hobart, and Alexandra also runs a beauty and brow business in North Hobart called Stella Arden, named in honour of her firstborn daughter.
“Fifteen years on and I’m still working on myself, I’m still working through it,” she admits of losing Stella. “Yes, I’ve gone on to have four more children and I literally thank my lucky stars every day, even through the worst days. I know some people [who lost a child] who have been so frightened, so paralysed, that they’ve never gone on to have any more children because the fear has frozen them. I still had that fear but I was willing to take that risk for love.”
She still feels guilt, and has spent many years carrying a sense of heaviness that she could have done more to help her daughter or to recognise that she was sick.
But Alexandra says being diagnosed with lung cancer three years ago, as a healthy 34-year-old who wasn’t a smoker, had helped her let go of some of that guilt and had made her more determined to appreciate the good things in her life.
“I was putting everyone else first and leaving me to last,” explains Alexandra, who is now well after undergoing surgery to remove the cancer.
“Which we all do as mums in some way, shape or form. But if you don’t have your health, you’ve got nothing.”
She has now made her health more of a focus and has embarked on a weight loss journey. She feels happier and more energetic and says she’s grateful to have had a wake-up call.
Mother’s Day will be a fairly relaxed affair. The children play various sports so there’s usually at least one football match to attend on Sunday.
“When my kids were younger I used to put more pressure on my husband to make it a really special day but I really don’t do that any more … I think the less pressure you put on it the better,” she says.
“I just kind of decided that it’s just another day – yes it is important to acknowledge it, but I like to keep it low-key.”
LAURA E KENNEDY
Award-winning artist and mum of Lumen
THERE were many times Laura E Kennedy feared she’d never get the chance to become a parent.
Being diagnosed with brain cancer five-and-a-half years ago, when she was just 32, threw her future plans into chaos. The award-winning artist didn’t know if she’d survive brain surgery. And even if she did, she had no idea what her long-term prognosis would be.
But Laura has exceeded all expectations. She has endured two successful surgeries and a course of radiation and chemotherapy. She also gave birth to daughter Lumen in January 2019, fulfilling her dream of becoming a mother.
And having faced such a frightening battle with cancer, Laura says she has a new-found appreciation for the good things in her life which has helped to make her a better parent.
She says giving birth to Lumen – whose name means “a measure of light” – had been a “wonderful, life-changing experience”.
“She’s my priority,” Laura explains. “I’m not having a bunch of kids, really it’s just going to be Lumen, so obviously I want to enjoy and appreciate her as much as I can.”
Laura says if she had to describe her daughter in one word it would be “cheeky”.
“She’s really embracing the terrible twos, she’s a real sweetheart and she’s energetic … she’s really enjoying all the boundary pushing at the moment,“ she says.
“And she’s obsessed with all-things ocean animals for some reason, which is great. I couldn’t be more thankful to be able to have her … I’m just so grateful for her health and her vitality.”
Laura still has scans every six months and is currently in the clear but is realistic that her cancer could return in the future. And having now been diagnosed with chronic fatigue, Laura says her greatest challenge is “not being capable of taking care of my daughter by myself for long periods of time”.
Fortunately she is surrounded by a wide support network – when Lumen isn’t being cared for by Laura or her husband Jason, she goes to a daycarer she loves or spends time with her grandparents.
“We’ve got both sets of grandparents down here, so she’s loving life and is really well cared for,” Laura says. “My doctor called her the unicorn baby – she had no real hiccups with her health, she sleeps like a dream, we’re very, very blessed, she’s just the light of so many people’s lives.”
Laura still manages to work part-time as a Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery attendant and is still making art from her “pyjama-friendly” home studio.
Laura won the $20,000 Henry Jones Art Prize in 2018. She has since exhibited in a couple of shows in New York and at Sydney Contemporary, and is now turning her focus to entering art prizes, including the Hadley’s Art Prize and the Archibald Prize. She’s also hoping to have a solo show next year but hasn’t booked anything yet as she doesn’t want to put too much pressure on herself.
Laura says before she was diagnosed with cancer, she wouldn’t have been brazen enough to enter these awards, particularly a high-calibre prize like the Archibald.
But she likes the challenge of coming up with work to suit a particular theme, and is less inhibited by other people’s opinions than she once was.
“[Having cancer] makes you way more aware that life is short,” she says. “There’s always going to be people who think you’re an idiot but you know that you’re not, so you’ve just got to do it anyway.”
Laura had been otherwise healthy until a series of seizures led to an MRI that found her brain tumour in 2015.
“It was pretty intense,” the now 38-year-old from New Town admits. “It certainly warps your entire outlook and perspective on life … it just turns your world upside down.”
Laura had always dreamt of adopting a child and she and Jason were part-way through the adoption process when Laura got sick, ruining their chances.
So having Lumen has been wonderful, although unrelenting.
“Everyone tells you it’s going to be hard,” Laura says of having a baby.
“They can warn you as much as they want but ultimately you don’t really know until you do it yourself. I thought ‘I can do hard’ but it’s even harder when your body fails.”
Still, she has no regrets about becoming a parent. She’s still passionate about adoption and would love to foster one day if her health improves and her energy returns.
Mother’s Day will involve “nothing too grand or ceremonial”, however, Laura will use it as an opportunity to thank her mother and mother-in-law for all that they do for her family.
“We usually get up and have croissants,” she says of Mother’s Day. “I don’t let myself have them too often … but I do let myself have them on Mother’s Day. Other than that we’ll go and visit my mum and mother-in-law in Kingston and Blackmans Bay … they do such a good job taking care of Lumen.”
She says Mother’s Day is also the perfect opportunity for people to stop and appreciate the small but special moments in their lives which sometimes go unnoticed.
“So many nights we’ll be sitting here having dinner and we’ll do a little happy dance, and have a kitchen dance party after dinner,” Laura says.
“And it’s just those little moments that are important. I think everyone is looking for this big, grand answer. It’s so clichéd, but the joy is really in those simple things. But you’ve got to eat it up while you can because the future isn’t guaranteed.”
She’s also mindful that Lumen won’t be little for long.
“I saw a guy on YouTube once, saying that you only get four years of your child being young and you never get it back,” Laura says. “And that was it for me. I thought, ‘Crap, I’m just going to rearrange everything else. This is important to me and what I need to do is to appreciate it and try and suck it in’. I’m not saying that life is easy at the moment but it’s super rewarding.”
BIANCA WELSH
Award-winning businesswoman and mum of Claude
Adopted from South Korea as a baby, Launceston’s Bianca Welsh says her adoptive parents gave her the greatest gift simply by not treating her any differently from their other biological children.
That unwavering parental love and support turned out to be the best defence against the racism Welsh, 34, endured as a child, and she hopes she can be a similar example to her own son, Claude.
“I looked visibly very different from everyone else in the family and I was one of only two Asian kids at both primary and high school,” Welsh says.
She says growing up in Launceston in the 1980s and 1990s was difficult for someone who looked different, but she has endured more racism in her adult years than she ever did as a child.
She and husband James are co-owners of renowned Launceston restaurants Stillwater and Black Cow.
“Sometimes it’s little things like when we’re standing at the bar in Stillwater, a guest has just walked in, and I’m standing next to a colleague who is white Australian, and I’ll say ‘Hello, how are you?’ And they’ll look at the person next to me because they don’t think I could have said it, they don’t expect me to have an Australian accent.
“And other times it’s grown men saying things like, ‘Oh, are you from Hi-5?’ Or they’ll say things like ‘All Asians are trouble’. And once they learn I’m actually an owner of the business they tell me they’ll never come back.”
Generally, Welsh says comments like this wash over her very easily but now that she is mum to four-year-old son Claude, she takes her responsibility seriously to prepare him for encountering racism in his own life.
“I do worry for Claude but I also know the world is a very different place now to when I was a kid. The shows he watches on TV now have Asian characters, people of colour, different sexual orientations and so on, so all these things have evolved so much.
“But because he’s [half Korean] I know he might experience things that were similar to what I did. But that also made me who I am now. I love to prove people wrong and show that you can’t judge me by my appearance.”
Welsh’s mother was made to put her up for adoption because she already had two daughters, in a society where boys were more prized. She says this knowledge makes her more grateful that she lives in a society where she can make her own choices and choose to be the parent she wants to be.
“For me to not have to ever consider having to give away a child like my mother did, I understand I’m very privileged and am really grateful for the life I was given.”
Women, there’s a killer reason you must know family history
Aussie women are being encouraged to know their family history in order to get ahead of a potentially deadly fight.
Pint-sized wine bar draws in a Hobart crowd
Tasmanians won’t line up for many things. But they will for Sonny, the pint-sized Hobart wine bar with the super-sized fan club ranked in Australia’s top 100 food experiences.