‘After having my first baby, I never wanted to work again’ – Davina McCall gets real about motherhood
She’s shifted her focus from menopause to motherhood – and welcomes her new book Birthing to the world this month. We had an intimate chat with Davina about everything from refusing pain relief to reframing ambition
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If you thought Davina McCall’s specialist subject was menopause, you’d be wrong. “Birth, just so you know, my favourite topic,” she leans in. “I could talk about it forever.”
We met earlier this year to talk about her brain tumour recovery (so much to discuss!) but I soon learned that Birthing, £11, was the book she’s always wanted it write. It has now landed, fittingly in September, the month that all three of her (now grown-up) babies were born. “They’re all Virgos,” the 57-year-old says with a smile and goes slightly gooey as she remembers her first birth with Holly, who turns 24 this month.
“I looked at Holly and I’d been the most ambitious person ever,” she say. “I knew I wanted to get to places. I knew where I wanted to work.” Davina was already very much in the public eye, presenting series 2 of Big Brother while heavily pregnant in a ‘Big Mother’ T-shirt. “But I looked at Holly, and I felt like she’d robbed me of all my ambition. I looked at her and I was, like, I never want to go to work ever again. ‘I just want to sit and look at you all day. I just want to stay in bed, skin-to-skin, and just lie here forever and never do anything ever again’.”
Davina with Get The Gloss’s Victoria
Like her Nibbie Book-of-the-Year-winning Menopausing book, Birthing, subtitled The positive roadmap to an empowered pregnancy and birth, takes a non-judgemental ‘you do you but here are the options’ approach.
While Menopausing was written with medical expertise from Dr Naomi Potter, Birthing draws on the professional and intensely practical knowledge of registered midwife and hypnobirthing instructor Marley Henry.
Davina describes her personal experience in each of the chapters– which go from conception, via the trimesters to birth and post-partum – with humour and candour.
We learn that she fell pregnant soon after trying, that she was terrified of pooing during labour (but was reassured by her midwife that it meant she was pushing properly) and that she refused both pethidine pain relief because it was an opioid, and she was an ex-addict, and gas and air because it was “mood altering”.
Readers are treated to plenty of interesting autobiographical insights as well as real women’s (and some men’s) stories, plus helpful explainers from experts in the fields of nutrition, clinical psychology, physiotherapy, Black maternal health, birth trauma, IVF and more.
Davina tells me that, on the advice of midwife Caroline Flint (“legend!”) who also contributes to the book, she took 10 days bed rest to recover and claims it was the best thing she ever did. “I didn’t get out of my pyjamas for 10 days, and I just lay with Holly,” she coos. “It was mega – obviously it’s quite hard to do that with the second one, because you’ve got the first one to look after.”
Not every woman has the joyful, exhilarating, bonding experiences that Davina had, and some journeys either never start, or end in tragedy, and Davina is the first to acknowledge this. Whatever your circumstances, Davina wants Birthing to be here for you. If you do give birth, she says, “I don’t care what type of birth you have. If you want to go and have an elective caesarean, have the best elective caesarean you can. If you want to have an epidural and give birth lying down, let’s make that the greatest experience of your life. Because what’s important is where you’re at mentally when you meet your baby. Or, can I support you through what could potentially be the hardest moment of your life if your birth doesn’t go the way that you wanted it to? What happens if your baby, very rarely, sadly, if it doesn’t make it? How can I help you through that? What happens if you are having a baby by surrogate, or in same sex partnerships? We look into everything and want to help you make it the greatest experience. Because a happy birth is a happy baby.”
How you were born matters too as an adult, she reflects. “Whenever I’ve gone through something traumatic, the counsellor or therapist they go, ‘how was your own birth? Everything starts here.”
Does she know anything about how she came into the world? Her late mother Florence’s pregnancy was anything but straightforward. “I was a month premature. My mum had pre-eclampsia [a potentially serious high blood pressure condition] so I was born, f*cking fighting, you know!” Florence then had a hysterectomy aged 28, following ovarian cancer, which prompted Davina to have a full health check before she tried to conceive in case of family history issues. (Tests, in fact, revealed an underactive thyroid, for which she received medication.)
Recovery is a topic on which Davina is particularly well versed, having spent many years in attending Narcotics Anonymous and more recently coming back from brain surgery in November 2024. There are some recovery strategies that work universally, she has learned. “If you’ve got a baby, get out in nature. That’s the best thing ever. And surround yourself [with people] – don’t be alone. They used to say in Narcotics Anonymous ‘an addict alone is in bad company’. But I would say anybody struggling alone is in bad company. If you’re struggling and you’re on your own, don’t stay on your own. Find someone to talk to and, if possible, find someone that’s going through something similar to you.”
With Birthing, you really do feel as though Davina is that person. She, with her community of experts and real women contributors, is there to hold your hand, whatever kind of birth journey you are on.
Birthing (HQ, £11) by Davina McCall is out now
