Carrie Bickmore has decided to be more spontaneous.
With a gruelling schedule so many mums can relate to – working full time, raising two kids, managing all those cycles of life – Bickmore’s life is typically a strict regime. Her parenting, thus far, has been based on routine.
“I can count on one hand the number of times Ollie has slept in my bed,” Carrie wrote for the launch issue of the Sunday Telegraph’s Stellar Magazine. “I raised him on a strict routine: I never rocked him to sleep, never fed him to sleep and never brought him to my bed when he woke at 5am.”
“My decision to raise him like this was partly due to necessity, because I worked full-time and needed his carers to know his routine; partly because I had huge personal stresses going on at the time and needed that part of my life to run smoothly; and also because I had him at 26 and had no idea what I was doing.”
But a few nights ago, something changed for Carrie.
She’d had a tough week. She’d interviewed a family who’s little boy was dying from brain cancer; covered a terrorist attack where children had died.
She thought it was time to break her own “rules”.
“I woke up my eight-year-old son, Ollie, brought him into the big bed and slept with him in my arms all night,” Carrie wrote. “All I wanted to do was have Ollie close.”
The joy this brought her made Carrie realise something.
“My desire to have my kids fit into my schedule, for our life to run to plan, to know I can leave them with anybody, and to have them sleep like hibernating bears just so Mama doesn’t lose her rag, means that I’ve been missing out on some of the best moments ever,” the television personality wrote.
