Bec Hewitt would appear to have it all — three beautiful children, an elite sportsman husband and a mansion in The Bahamas. Yet behind the sunny smile lies a mind that rarely rests.
In a candid interview in the June issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly, Bec reveals her personal demons, confessing she is manic about cleaning and tidying her home.
“I’m definitely obsessive compulsive,” she says. “Oh, good golly, any kind of cleaning, bed making. It’s the way I do things. I do that repetition thing. If I’m not sure that I’ve done it, well, I’ll do it again. Though having kids has really helped to break that.”
So was it ever a serious problem?
“Umm,” Bec pauses. “Well, I guess it bothered me because it would consume time unnecessarily. But then you just have to take a step back and look at your behaviour from an outsider’s point of view.
“There was a little while there where I had to work really hard to find a balance. But having kids has definitely helped because you can’t live in a picture-perfect house. You’ve got to learn to let things go a little bit.”
Bec and Lleyton have three kids together, Mia, seven, Cruz, four and two-year-old Ava. The family spends a lot of time of the road, travelling around the world on the professional tennis circuit and the level of organisation this requires feeds Bec’s compulsive habits.
“I do find it hard to sleep at night,” Bec says. “I find it really hard to unwind. The only time I really unwind or relax is when Lleyton is home. We enjoy sitting and watching TV together.
“When I do sit down and watch TV, that’s when I realise how exhausted I really am. But, otherwise, I would never acknowledge it. When Mum asks if I am tired, I usually just tell her, ‘Next question’.
“My dad will sometimes come and stay when we are in Sydney, and Lleyton has had to duck down to Melbourne. Dad will wake up at seven in the morning to come out and find me in the same clothes as the night before, and I just drop everything and start walking to my room because I know I should have been in bed hours ago.
“But I’m not that bad any more. I can’t give you a number on how many hours’ sleep I get each night, but it’s probably less than the average person.”
