Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Sophie Ellis-Bextor read a passage in a pregnancy book and recognised herself

Content note — this story covers a subject some people would rather choose when to read.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor was twenty-four and pregnant for the first time. It was a low-risk pregnancy, midwife-led — the kind where you go in occasionally and they say they will probably see you towards the end. She did not feel right. Her ankles swelled, she had headaches, and she describes not looking like herself and not wanting to see people. What she concluded was not that something was wrong, but that she was bad at being pregnant. She had always wanted a baby, and here she was finding it hard. At a check-up on a Friday a midwife told her that her blood pressure was a bit high, gave her tablets, and asked her to come back on the Monday. That weekend she went to a christening, and the mother-in-law of a friend told her she did not look well. Her reaction was relief. She says she wanted to hug her — finally someone had said it. The night before the Monday appointment she was reading a book about pregnancy and reached a short passage about pre-eclampsia. She started crying. She was, she says, pretty sure that was her. She was right. At the appointment she was told she was not going home and not packing a bag. She was taken straight to a hospital with a neonatal unit and told she would be having her baby in days, not weeks. She was thirty-one weeks pregnant. She describes being somewhat in denial — being shown around the unit where her baby would go, and thinking that none of it would really happen. Her son was born that Friday. It happened again in her second pregnancy, nearly five years later, and it arrived differently. No headaches that time and no swelling, just her blood pressure. She found out close to by accident: she was due to fly abroad for a gig and needed a letter from her consultant to travel. The consultant checked her and told her she was not flying anywhere. That baby was born nine weeks early. Before her third pregnancy she asked whether it was likely to happen a third time, and says she was told that having had it twice does not mean you are expected to have it again. She carried that pregnancy to full term, and says the thing she could not believe was being handed the baby straight away, because with the first two she had not been able to hold them. Looking back, she says it is quite wild that she simply went: okay, next time. Nothing here is medical advice. The NHS says pre-eclampsia usually causes no symptoms you would notice at first, and that it is normally picked up through the blood pressure and urine checks at routine antenatal appointments — which is much of why those appointments matter. It also lists having had pre-eclampsia in an earlier pregnancy among the things that raise the risk of getting it again.

• Pre-eclampsia