The Unequal Burden: How Motherhood Ended My 15-Year Relationship
I watched my then-fiancé walk effortlessly out of the hospital ward to head to his office, dressed immaculately in a Mulberry shirt, while I lay dishevelled in a hospital nightdress, barely a week after giving birth. This moment crystallised the widening chasm between our experiences of parenthood.
A Stark Contrast in Post-Birth Realities
Later, I seethed inwardly at the selfies he’d posted online in scrubs, taken mere moments before I was cut open for an emergency caesarean. By the time photos appeared from his office Christmas bash, on the very night our baby and I were discharged from hospital in December 2017, I’d resigned myself to the profound differences in our lives.
It became painfully clear that by simple virtue of his sex, Chris’ life would continue uninterrupted while I was left alone to cope with a traumatic birth and seriously unwell newborn, alongside my own failing health. This unforeseen change would ultimately end our 15-year relationship, which began in our first year of university.
Echoes in Celebrity Experience
When news broke that Jesy Nelson had split from her fiancé Zion Foster, weeks after revealing their eight-month-old twin daughters had been diagnosed with a neuromuscular disorder, it landed with a dull familiarity. Like me, Jesy experienced a high-risk pregnancy with serious complications requiring heavy medical supervision. Her daughters, too, spent weeks in neonatal intensive care with a condition affecting their early development.
It was during the immediate aftermath of childbirth that I noticed – for the first time – that the rules are profoundly different for men. They are praised for carrying on with their professional lives, while women are scrutinised to see if they perform motherhood correctly.
A Pregnancy of Denial
Throughout my pregnancy, I carried on as if nothing had changed, driving between the University of Cambridge and University of Exeter, teaching, researching, travelling and projecting competence. Everything was fine, I’d told myself, despite the gestational diabetes and worsening pre-eclampsia.
Reality finally hit on Bonfire Night when my mother looked on in horror as my ordinarily size three feet refused to squeeze into a pair of size 11 Hunter wellies. By the next morning, the world had dissolved into a literal blur. I lost my vision, was diagnosed with HELLP syndrome – a life-threatening pregnancy complication – and was admitted to hospital in premature labour.
Medical Pressures and Judgement
I should have been resting. Instead, I spent those hours of labour writing and researching for a career I would never get back. I even persuaded my sister to drive to the hospital and sit beside my bed, typing for me, until Chris arrived after work.
A doctor advised a caesarean due to my deteriorating condition, but the midwives resisted, repeatedly insisting I could deliver 'naturally'. I spent twelve hours in labour under quiet pressure to persist. When I chose to follow the doctor’s advice, a subtle but unmistakable judgement followed. Even Chris, who is famously impervious to emotional undercurrents, noticed their tone cool and their patience wear thin.
Loneliness and Separation
The doctor said I could safely wait until morning for the caesarean, so Chris, ever the pragmatist, went home to sleep. It was a sensible decision, but it was the loneliness and the coldness of the midwives, while I was so unwell, that stayed with me far more than any physical pain.
I couldn’t physically see our baby daughter, Mabel, when she was born due to the HELLP syndrome. She didn’t cry. Less than an hour later, she turned blue and was rushed to neonatal intensive care with a suspected collapsed lung. Doctors said this breathing problem was compounded by medication I relied on following cancer treatment.
Hospital Challenges and Sepsis
A midwife delivered this information very bluntly, and it landed badly at a moment when everything was already fragile. The hospital itself was in upheaval, with its maternity wing being relocated, beds lining corridors, and we weren’t on a proper mother-and-baby ward.
I wasn’t allowed to stay with Mabel, as there were no beds for mums on that floor. In any case, I was vomiting and feverish before the anaesthetic had even worn off. I’d later learn this was because I had sepsis. When I finally saw our newborn, she was connected to breathing and feeding tubes. She cried the whole time during their insertion.
Diverging Paths
After a traumatic three-and-a-half weeks, we were both deemed well enough for discharge. Mabel remained fragile and prone to breathing difficulties and infections for the next two years. She vomited seven or eight times daily, often accompanied by rash, swelling and fast breathing.
When Chris became a father, his career accelerated. A promotion followed, then a partnership at his chartered accounting firm and longer hours spent out of the house. Mine stalled completely. With an unwell baby and no support, I quit my academic job to take an extra year of maternity leave, moving into precarious freelance work for flexibility.
The Emotional Toll
Chris became short-tempered and irritable as Mabel's health troubles persisted. I did the opposite. When things became too much, I withdrew and sat alone with our baby. I prayed he would stay asleep every time she woke at night. One crying baby was infinitely easier than a crying baby and an angry man.
The first two years of motherhood were brutal, and I’ve largely erased them from memory. I can recall a handful of landmarks including trips to Garda, Pisa, two to Ibiza and another to Brittany, all undertaken with a poorly baby.
A Societal Problem
My experience is far from unique. Countless women know this story in one form or another. We live in a society that treats salaried work as the only labour with real value, while childcare – the one job where you are truly irreplaceable – is treated as something we should effortlessly absorb around it.
It’s an inescapable fact that a career pays the bills and motherhood does not. Overnight, your independence slips away, bringing a vulnerability you believed you had left behind long ago. I felt abandoned, exhausted and invisible, and I silently hated my partner.
The Relationship's End
While my life narrowed to survival, he was content for his own to continue normally with long working days packed with meetings, client dinners and glossy work trips. He was constantly praised for coping, but I was judged for every decision. This anger and resentment ended our relationship. Our child could barely walk and I was already a single mother.
For years, we simply didn’t talk about what happened when Mabel was born. Neither of us wanted to remember those days of waiting to find out if she would be okay. The pain was too raw.
Unexpected Healing
We’ve tried to stay on broadly good terms. Last month, Chris and I found ourselves sitting in the leisure centre café while Mabel took part in her weekly swim class. He has since remarried, and spoke about the arrival of his third child before Christmas.
Their newborn has allergies too. This time, there was proper help. It didn’t take them two years of worsening health to get correct diagnoses. The contrast with Mabel’s birth and early childhood was stark.
For the first time, we felt able to acknowledge the pain of those early years and the toll they took on us. It felt unexpectedly healing, and weeks on we both recognise that the conversation brought a sense of peace.
Moving Forward
Watching Mabel now, I don’t regret giving up my career for a second. It paid off. I’m not really dating. The truth is that I’m still too traumatised by what happened and the years of uncertainty about our child’s health. I’m hyper-vigilant now in a way I never used to be.
When I meet men who already have children, I listen closely to how they talk about the mother of those children. Their compassion, or lack of it, tells me everything. I know that I probably judge too much, but it comes from a place of experience.
Women can quickly be left carrying everything while life continues smoothly elsewhere. And if the choice is between being cautious and being abandoned when I needed help the most, I know which one I would rather live with.
