Lily Allen was "shocked and disappointed" when her life as a mother didn’t happen the way she had imagined it.
The 33-year-old singer has daughters Ethel, six, and Marnie, five, with her ex-husband Sam Cooper, and has said she thinks her "dream" of a perfect life in the country with her family caused her to suffer postnatal depression when her children were born, as she realised she hadn’t achieved her ideal life.
She said: "Neither of my parents was particularly good at parenting, so it wasn’t a skillset that I had. I sort of assumed it would all just happen naturally. And it didn’t. And I think that was the trigger for my postnatal depression. My whole childhood I’d been dreaming of this two point four children, living in the country – everything was just going to fall into place and I’d be this perfect mum. And it didn’t happen. I was very shocked and disappointed."
The ‘Trigger Bang’ hitmaker went on tour whilst suffering from depression and ended up cheating on her husband with other men, as well as hiring a female sex worker to visit her on the road.
When asked if she wanted to get caught, Lily told The Guardian newspaper: "Um. No. I was pretty brazen with all my behaviour. I think I just didn’t care. Actually, maybe I did want to get caught, maybe I wanted Sam to rescue me. I wanted him to find out about these things and say, ‘Enough is enough, you’re coming home.’ I was at my lowest ebb."
Lily details her battle with depression in her new book ‘My Thoughts Exactly’, and recently took to Instagram to share the story of her hiring female escorts, after parts of her story were leaked to the press.
The ‘Not Fair’ singer wrote: "Sooo, in my book ‘My Thoughts Exactly’ (out on 20th Sept) I detail some stuff from my dark days, around the Sheezus era. I slept with female escorts when I was on tour, cause I was lost and lonely and looking for something. I’m not proud, but I’m not ashamed. I don’t do it anymore. (sic)"