Beneath the Surface

by Libby Trickett

  Of course, when I have the courage to be really honest with my friends, their true colours shine through. They’re compassionate, loving people. I don’t feel judged. I feel embraced, even by those women who haven’t had the same experience because their babies were seemingly easier or their psychological disposition is different to mine. I know the world is full of women who have children and cope just fine with it, but that wasn’t me, and that wasn’t my fault. I’m not deficient or broken or bad because I had postnatal depression, nor is any other woman who suffers through it.

  For me, Poppy’s sleep deprivation was a trigger, and probably changed things physiologically and psychologically in my body. For others, a traumatic birth could be the trigger, or the flood of hormones that rushes through our bodies during pregnancy, or maybe pre-existing mental-health conditions that are aggravated by the challenges of caring for a newborn baby. I’ve been reading a lot about it recently, and my eyes are wide open now. It helps me to talk about it, and my friends are ready and willing to listen. ‘You’re doing pretty well, all things considered,’ a girlfriend tells me, which is really nice to hear.

  I go back to work just after we move house. I’d started back at Megaport in a marketing and events role just before I got pregnant with Poppy, and had extended my maternity leave because of the struggles we’d had, but Luke and I are still not fully recovered from our financial troubles and I need to be working. It’s only three days a week, which is manageable, and I actually think it’s helping with my recovery to have some part of my identity that is not just being a mother. I massively appreciate the social connection—having adult conversations is a refreshing change of pace.

  It’s challenging, of course. Actually, that’s an understatement—it’s fucking hard being a working mother, and there is a whole different category of guilt associated with having to leave work because your child is sick, or skipping out on a meeting because you have to pick them up from childcare. But I’m lucky to be working with supportive people; they’ve been understanding the whole way through this process. When Poppy was six months old and I was in the depths of despair, I had to go to my team at Megaport and tell them that I just wasn’t ready to come back. The heads of the parent company are American, and just don’t have the cultural grounding to understand what extended maternity leave is. They also don’t have children. I think it might have been the first time that mental-health issues had been discussed so openly with them as well, but to their credit they took everything I said on board and told me to take all the time I needed. I will be eternally grateful for that. If they had demanded that I go back to work at six months, I would have been forced to quit, which would have created more financial stress at exactly the wrong time.

  Now that I’m back, and feeling better, I’m in a good groove. I am so much better suited to the new role at Megaport, which is focused on event planning and creating marketing collateral. I organise meet-ups and events between prospective clients and our sales team, and coordinate Megaport’s involvement at tradeshows and conferences. It’s extraordinary how much more capable and confident I feel in this role, purely because I’m better suited to it. I don’t have to know my way around the intimate corners of a groundbreaking yet niche technology. I don’t have to generate leads and cold-call people to pitch them a product I barely understand. Marketing and events feels so simple by comparison, with very clear processes and outcomes, though the indicators of success are nowhere near as brutal. It’s interesting to me that while I wanted to be the best as a swimmer—nothing but the best—I have zero drive to be the best at sales, which in a way is equally precise and measurable. On the other hand, the process of preparing for an event—following the process, doing the work and then having everything come together on the day—feels very familiar.

  What I’ve learned this time around is that I don’t suck. I didn’t suck the first time I worked at Megaport either, I was just not the right fit for the job. People throw that expression around a lot—not the right fit—but I think it’s a very useful way to understand the world and your place in it. No one is going to be great at everything—I’m certainly not—but I am good at some things. My current role at Megaport is good because it utilises the skills that I have. When I know what I’m doing and I understand the process, I can work hard, I can focus, I can persevere; all of the things that helped me succeed as an athlete are actually transferrable skills. I work well in a team environment too. I have a bit of experience there.

  The only challenge for me, which affects my level of commitment to the job and probably means I am not a really extraordinary employee, is that I’m not actually passionate about technology. I’m also very clear that I don’t want to work in an office job long-term—my body just isn’t geared for it. But I don’t know what I want to do instead. I can feel an energy building inside me that wants an outlet, but I’m not sure what to do with it yet. I’m just conscious that it’s there.

  I still have the occasional TV gig. I’ve been on the Daily Edition and the Morning Show on Channel 7 several times since Poppy was born, usually just as ‘former Olympic champion Libby Trickett, dropping in to say hello’. I’ve been posting fairly open and honest accounts of what I’ve been going through on social media, minus the seriously dark stuff, so my TV appearances have been geared around the challenges of being a mother.

  At seven months, Poppy came on air with me: she bawled the entire time, tried to crawl off the desk and grabbed at everything within reach, but I remained sunny and seemingly lucid about how tricky it is to be a mum, which is kind of hilarious. It is strange, though, to see how broadly I could smile on TV when my private life was crumbling. That’s the people pleaser in me again: not wanting to be too vulnerable, not wanting to make anyone feel uncomfortable, being honest without being entirely true. It’s also a coping mechanism for me to make light of things, and that’s exactly what I was doing. It was the best I could do at the time. Behind the scenes, I was tearing myself to shreds.

  It’s not until Poppy is about twelve months old that I really open up in public about how bad things were, about my depression and my rock bottom. I talk about those things publicly when I’m strong enough to do it. I talk about it because I think it’s important to acknowledge what happened, because I want other women going through similar things to know that they’re not alone, and because I want to forgive myself. I’m still working on that. I want to move forward, and that means I can’t carry the grief and guilt about what happened around with me every day. But I do think it’s good to pick it up and look at it every now and then, to remind myself how far I’ve come.

  While all this is going on, I’m still in the public eye, and still searching for that next career move that will broaden my world a little more. I get a call from a producer at the Southern Cross Austereo radio network, who tells me there’s an opportunity coming up—he’s wondering if I’d like to audition for the new Triple M drive-time show in Brisbane. A veteran radio guy called Luke Bradnam is going to anchor the team, and they need to find the right co-hosts to bounce off his energy. I’ve had a little exposure to radio over the years, and a brief maternity leave fill-in role for the then Labby, Stav and Abby show on B105, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m absolutely green. Still, I jump at the chance. I love to talk, and I love to laugh. Maybe radio will become my new passion.

  I do an air test with Luke in December 2017 and then absolutely nothing happens. I don’t hear a peep out of Triple M for six weeks. Must have absolutely nailed the audition, I think, trying not to be too disappointed. They’re obviously auditioning everyone under the sun and I’m just another girl in the line. It’s out of my hands anyway—I know it’s about on-air chemistry, and you can’t force that. I thought Luke and I had it, but perhaps I’m not quite as charming as I imagined.

  By mid-January, I can’t bear waiting anymore so I give the producer a call to follow up, which takes quite a lot of balls on my behalf. This triggers another four or five air tests with L
uke and me, with a different man in the third chair each time. There are radio presenters, comedians, former athletes and a sports commentator named Ben ‘Dobbo’ Dobbin, who ends up landing the job. I get the job as well, thank god, and come February I have left Megaport and started a brand-new career as a drive-time radio host.

  My job is to come up with funny anecdotes about my life so that Luke, Dobbo and I can talk about them on air, which is easy enough, though it does make me look at every moment through an oddly critical lens. Luke said something funny over dinner—is that a bite? Does the world want to hear about Poppy’s toilet training? Is that funny? Is that engaging? Would that be good on air? I resist this mindset initially, but it becomes a running joke in my team that I’m not bringing enough content, so I have to at least try to get with the program.

  In the meantime, I’m feel like I’m very good at reacting to Luke and Dobbo’s stories, and there’s plenty of drama in our little on-air family. We have regular segments including ‘World Record Wednesdays’, where I attempt to break a world record. It’s ridiculous fun and I am the right woman for the task, because I am as competitive as ever. I’m up for any challenge, whether it’s trying to eat a record-breaking number of Ferrero Rocher chocolates in one minute (quite hard, by the way) or putting on a record-breaking number of undies (smashed it). We have team challenges, too—rifle shooting, monster truck driving, whip cracking—and I do my best at every turn. I don’t always triumph, but I do have a lot of fun. The job brings out the playful, light-hearted side of my personality, which is a nice place to be after everything I’ve been through. My confidence goes through the roof, along with my self-esteem. It’s really nice to feel like I’m good at something again.

  Metro breakfast radio always seems to be the goal. If you’re a career presenter and you want to reach the top of the pile, then you’re aiming for a chance at that sweet breakfast spot, which always has the biggest audience. Luke, Dobbo and I get our chance maybe six months after we start broadcasting together—a two-week backfill gig while the regular hosts are on holiday. My co-hosts are over the moon, but all I can think about is how painful it will be to get up at 4 a.m. every day and still parent as well.

  And, indeed, it is extremely painful. It throws my whole routine out with Poppy and absolutely kills my social life (which is virtually non-existent anyway) because getting up at 4 a.m. makes 6 p.m. look like a reasonable bedtime. It’s only the smallest window of time, but it gets me thinking: Where am I going with this? If breakfast radio is the ultimate goal, and I don’t want to do breakfast radio, what’s my goal supposed to be?

  If I didn’t still carry around with me that lock-jawed athlete’s mindset, I’d probably just decide that drive-time radio is a fine place to be and leave it at that, but I feel like I want more, or that I’m supposed to want more. My brain starts ticking over and I find myself thinking, This is great, but what am I really going to do with my life? Radio is suddenly looking like a two-to-five-year plan.

  Part of the problem is that the radio gig is fun, but it doesn’t feel particularly meaningful to me. I’ve done better on-air than I have in any other role in my post-swimming career, which is wonderful, but now that I have some kind of mojo back, I want something meatier. I have no intention of resigning—I feel competent, I’m learning things, and my income is good for me and my family—but I’m starting to think about the bigger picture. I feel like good things are coming. I don’t know what they look like, exactly, but I trust that they’re in my future. Sometimes you just have to leave things up to the universe and see what happens.

  It’s easier for me to be optimistic these days, because Poppy is now a wonderful sleeper. Most of the time she sleeps the whole way through the night, and all the horrors of that first year have faded into the background. I’ve come to understand that the early intense, high-need period of a child’s life really is a season, and that season passes eventually. It honestly felt for a while like she would never grow and never change, and I would never sleep again, and yet here we are eighteen months later and the whole world looks different. The more Poppy grows and communicates with me, the more she talks and expresses herself, the more delightful she is to me. And we have entered a really interesting phase of her life where she is, for the most part, pretty delightful.

  Driving home from childcare one day, I ask if she wants some food, and instead of burbling or nodding her head, she looks right at me and says, ‘Nana.’ Oh my god! ‘You want a banana?’ I ask, and she nods. This is amazing!

  Another day, I ask her to go to the bathroom and get the hairbrush, and she does it, and I am absolutely thrilled with her. She can’t say ‘bathroom’ or ‘hairbrush’, but she knows what they are—and isn’t that the most incredible thing? My daughter is amazing.

  I love watching her learn to jump—it’s genuinely magical to me. Watching her hit all those physical milestones—crawling, walking, hopping, skipping—gives me a special thrill. And seeing her splashing in the pool is the most beautiful thing ever.

  I always knew I wanted a sibling for Pops. I want her to have an ally in life, someone she always feels connected to. I also want her to have a playmate so that it’s not always my responsibility to keep her entertained, and with that in mind I feel like they need to be relatively close together in age. With life feeling generally pretty wonderful now, Luke and I start talking about having another kid. We go from talking to trying to conceive in pretty short order.

  From the outset, we learn that every child is different. Conceiving is so different, and so much harder, the second time around. I can’t track my cycle and don’t seem to be ovulating at all; everything feels out of whack. We decide to see a doctor for some reproductive assistance, and a medication called Clomid that helps stimulate ovulation is prescribed. But even with the drugs, we struggle. We don’t want to get bogged down in it, so after four cycles we decide to take a break from the project. ‘We’re just going to focus on other things for a while,’ we tell the doctor.

  ‘That’s the kind of talk that gets you pregnant,’ he laughs.

  Within a few weeks, we do a test and discover that he’s right.

  I’m nervous, but I feel so much more prepared now than I did the first time. For the first twelve months of Poppy’s life, I was convinced she would be an only child. You’ve done it to yourself, kiddo, I would think. There’s no way I can do that again. But now I think the saying is very true: time heals all wounds. And time has given me enough perspective to know that it won’t happen again, at least not the same way.

  There’s every chance my next kid won’t sleep either, or that they will have some other issue that makes life very hard. But I know now that being a mother doesn’t mean I have to be perfect. All I can do is try my best, be kind to myself, be honest and, most importantly, ask for help when I need it.

  2012

  ALICE: ‘Have I gone mad?’

  MAD HATTER: ‘I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I will tell you a secret, all of the best people are.’

  —Alice in Wonderland

  Luke and I were so happy to be back in Brisbane. My family was there, my close friends were there. I felt so much less alone and so comfortable. Even though Sydney had been technically home for Luke, he loved Brisbane’s pace and lifestyle. It was much easier to see ourselves putting down roots and raising kids in that city, and ultimately that’s what we wanted. We wanted to build our team, a little squad of Tricketts, who loved the outdoors and exercise, and just living a peaceful life. We wanted a home and a happy family. But before that, there was my unfinished business in the pool.

  At 27, my body didn’t respond or recover as well as it did when I was twenty. I realise it doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but it is truly different at the elite level of swimming. This was my greatest challenge, leading into the London Olympics. Mentally, I was a stronger competitor than I had ever been, but my body had lost the advantages of youth. That’s just how it was, and I had to deal with it.
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  Stephan was coming to the end of his coaching career, but he still ran a very professional squad. In some ways, I missed the punishing standards he had once demanded of me, but I didn’t know if I could even have met those standards now. I was working incredibly hard just to get back into shape. I didn’t shed every single pound that I had gained in my year of inactivity, but I came very close, and the composition of my muscle and skin tone was where it needed to be. I finished 2011 as fit and lean as any elite swimmer should be. Despite everything, despite missing the World Championships and failing to shine at the World Cup, I was still confident that I would make it to London and swim the individual races. All I wanted was one more chance to win gold in the 100-metre freestyle, the race that had always eluded me.

  The Olympic trials were held in March 2012 at the South Australian Leisure and Aquatic Centre, in Adelaide. Jess Schipper was there, of course, along with Leisel Jones, Alice Mills, Stephanie Rice and the Campbell sisters. I was happy to see some familiar faces in the ranks, but there were so many young swimmers I didn’t recognise. My generation was thinning out—the boys as well as the girls. It was clearly our last hurrah. We’d travelled very similar roads but the relationships at that meet were unchanged. There was a deep well of respect, but the competition came first. We were all racing for the same precious spots. If anything, we had more at stake, because we knew this was our last chance.

  Amongst the ranks of new swimmers were Yolane Kukla and Brittany Elmslie, and Melanie Schlanger who had been around for years but was just hitting her stride was there too, all from Queensland, and all sprinters. They were my new competitors in the freestyle races, and they were incredibly fast. The Campbell sisters were just hitting their peak, dominating the freestyle sprint field. And all of them were significantly younger than me, and hadn’t had the time out of the pool. They had completely different body shapes to me, something that I felt had only become more pronounced over the years. My competitors seemed to get taller and taller, with big hands and long limbs that just powered through the water.