Irish influencer and entrepreneur Pippa O’Connor Ormond recently spoke out about her “heartbreaking” miscarriage experience on a public Instagram story.
She also announced that she and husband, television presenter Brian Ormond, are “on cloud nine” after announcing her recent pregnancy.
She said: “We’re just on cloud nine, Brian and I are so thrilled. We love babies. We always knew we wanted another baby. It never happened after Louis so we were kind of at peace with it and so happy with what we have. I’m grateful for what we have”, she said via an Instagram story.
“I didn’t want to be always wishing for another, but we always said if it happened, amazing. When it didn’t happen for so long after Louis we thought, that’s okay, we’re fine with that. We’re more than happy with what we have”.
“And then last summer I got pregnant, which was the biggest shock. I literally could not believe it. And then unfortunately I had a miscarriage in October. I went for my second scan, and there was no heartbeat. I know so many people have been there and I know there’s a lot of people watching this have just gone through this today or last week and we all know how common it is, unfortunately”.
“You want to be able to relate to someone”
O’Connor Ormond said she feels there remains a societal taboo around addressing pregnancy loss.
“I still think it’s unsaid and to be honest, I don’t even know when or if I’d have said it if I wasn’t lucky enough to be pregnant again now. I suppose we don’t want to show vulnerability and I personally don’t want to feel sad. But I know how I thought at the time and how I wanted to hear someone else say ‘that happened to me’. You know you want to be able to relate to someone”.
She added, “I’m so conscious of not wanting to upset people. I’m sharing my own story and I just wanted to be truthful about what I went through because you can look at Instagram, someone’s sharing their lovely news and it can look like everything is perfect all the time but I can guarantee you that everyone has been through something along the way”.
She also expressed how she felt uncomfortable about revealing her recent pregnancy but hiding news of her miscarriage and felt the urge to share the story in the “…hope that it can give a little bit of comfort to anyone sad or struggling at the moment. Thank you again for all the love yesterday. It was niggling in my mind, it was important for me to just talk about what we had been through because it just didn’t feel right for me to not say anything”.
“You have the right to grieve”
She went on: “When I was in Holles Street [The location of the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin], this lovely nurse said to me, ‘Pippa, it doesn’t matter if you have six babies at home or none. A loss is a loss and it’s okay to feel sad.’ That sentence really stuck with me and helped me. A part of me was saying, ‘it’s fine, cop on, you have two kids’, and I am well aware of all the struggles that so many people face to even try and have one. I was being hard on myself for being sad. You have the right to feel sad and to grieve a loss, no matter what stage of pregnancy that you’re at”.
She added that she hopes more women will talk openly about miscarriage and offer each other comfort in their shared experiences.
“If you haven’t said anything about your own loss or what you’re going through or your struggles to anyone if you say it to even one or two people you would feel so much better about it and I think you might be surprised as to what you hear back from people as well”.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said: “Pippa O’Connor deserves our praise for speaking up on such a personal and sensitive issue as her struggle with miscarriage. Hopefully, as Pippa suggested, the more women who discuss these topics, the more we are able to support each other through such tragedy. We wish Pippa and her family a happy and healthy pregnancy with her baby boy”.
