Sunrise host Natalie Barr has bravely opened up about her struggle of becoming a mother during one of the darkest points of her life.
The Channel 7 journalist has confessed to a tragic truth about giving birth to her first child 22 years ago: while she loved her baby boy, she didn’t always like being a mother.
In the candid interview on the most recent episode of Mamamia’s No Filter podcast, the WA-born TV sweetheart revealed details of her lonely battle back in 2001 when she felt like a “total failure as a mum.”
“I had always wanted kids. But then I thought maybe this is just me,” she said.
Barr’s life took a heart-wrenching turn when, at six months pregnant, she received an unexpected call in the middle of the night.
Her father, Jim, had prematurely passed away after returning home from a game of golf that afternoon complaining of heartburn.
At just 61 years old he suffered left ventricular failure, a condition in which the heart loses its ability to effectively pump blood around the body.
Barr returned to her hometown of Bunbury to plan the funeral and just weeks later, gave birth to her son Lachlan which left her: “strung out and exhausted.”
“It was torture,” she said.
She told podcast host Mia Freedman as she faced the sleepless nights of early parenthood, she also grappled with self-doubt and some of her darkest moments.
“You think, ‘Does the baby somehow know that I’m upset and I’m grieving? Is that why [he can’t sleep]?’” she said.
“Then a woman in my mother’s group actually told me it was because I went back to work [three months postpartum] that my baby wasn’t sleeping. So there was all this unhelpful information around.”
Barr went on to question if, using modern screening methods, she would have been diagnosed with postnatal depression after she was cleared by doctors at the time.
“I can remember them giving me a list of things. ‘Do you feel this? Do you feel this? Do you want to harm your baby?’” she said.
“I went, ‘Okay. Right. Now, what do we do?’ But there were no answers,” she said.
But after 18 months of extreme sleep deprivation, Barr and her husband, film editor Andrew Thompson enlisted a private sleep consultant who cracked the code to peaceful slumber.
Fast forward four years, with her dark days firmly behind her, the couple welcomed another bundle of joy, Hunter.
Over two decades later Barr said her family is all now happy and healthy, and that she takes comfort in knowing she did her best — for herself and her boys.