Having a baby made me hate my fiancé: His life went on, while I had to be the perfect mother to our very sick daughter. That’s why it’s no surprise Jesy Nelson and her partner have split: REBECCA TIDY

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.

Later, I seethed inwardly at the selfies he’d posted online in scrubs, taken mere moments before I was cut open.

But, by the time the photos appeared from the office Christmas bash, on the very night our baby and I were discharged from hospital in December 2017, I’d resigned myself to the widening differences in our lives.

It was clear that by simple virtue of his sex, Chris’s 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 the first year of university. We spent our twenties building our careers, with sun-soaked holidays along the way, never imagining how quickly it could all unravel.

So when the news broke that Jesy Nelson had split from her fiancé Zion Foster, weeks after revealing that their eight-month-old twin daughters had been diagnosed with a neuromuscular disorder, it landed with a dull familiarity.

Jesy, like me, experienced a high-risk pregnancy with serious complications that needed heavy medical supervision. Her daughters, too, spent weeks in neonatal intensive care with a condition that affects their early development.

It was during the immediate aftermath of childbirth that I noticed – for the first time – that the rules are very different for men. They are praised for carrying on, while women are scrutinised to see if they perform motherhood correctly.

I’d carried on during pregnancy 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 that causes the breakdown of red blood cells, elevated liver enzymes and a low platelet count) and was then admitted to hospital in premature labour.

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 C-section 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.

The doctor said I could safely wait until the morning for the caesarean, so Chris, ever the pragmatist, went home to sleep. It was a sensible decision. There was nothing he could do while we waited for a scheduled C-section slot.

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 the neonatal intensive care unit with a suspected collapsed lung.

Doctors said that this breathing problem was compounded by the medication that I relied on in the aftermath of my five-year, successful skin cancer treatment. 

A midwife delivered this information very bluntly, and it landed badly at a moment when everything was already fragile. It caused long-lasting damage to our relationship.

The hospital itself was in upheaval. Its maternity wing was being relocated, beds lined the 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 of the hospital. In any case, I was vomiting and feverish before the anaesthetic had even worn off. I’d later learn that this was because I had sepsis.

When I finally saw our newborn, she was connected to breathing and feeding tubes. It had taken an hour to insert them. She cried the whole time.

The birth happened on a Saturday, and the next week simply vanished. My next clear memory is of my ex strolling out of the hospital to go to work.

After a traumatic three-and-a-half weeks that are best glossed over, we were both deemed well enough to be discharged.

Mabel remained fragile and prone to breathing difficulties and infections for the next two years. She vomited seven or eight times a day, and it was often accompanied by a rash, swelling and fast breathing.

Though she was underweight, distressed and clearly in pain, there was no clear diagnosis. Help was hard to access until we reached crisis point and ended up back in hospital once more.

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. With an unwell baby and what seemed like no support, I quit my academic job to take an extra year of maternity leave. I moved into precarious freelance work so I had the flexibility to care for Mabel.

There were endless hospital trips, constant anxiety and years spent on breast milk, before the extent of her allergies finally became clear.

Persistence eventually paid off. By the time the diagnosis came, that Mabel had dairy, soy, wheat, tomato and pepper allergies, as well as avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID), the problems eased almost overnight.

Those affected by ARFID can eat only a very limited handful of foods that don’t cause severe revulsion.

But still, it was undeniable that parenthood rewarded us very differently.

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 up 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 my 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.

But 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. And so, overnight, your independence slips away. It brings a vulnerability you believed you had left behind long ago.

I felt abandoned, exhausted and invisible, and I silently hated my partner.

While my life narrowed to survival, he was content for his own to continue as normal 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.

I am certain that, left to him, things would have carried on. We would both have stayed together, quietly miserable.

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.

We’ve tried to stay on broadly good terms. It’s pointless to erase a relationship that’s defined so much of our lives.

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 the 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.

I wish we could’ve known she would be well enough to swim in a cold pool by the time she reached junior school.

Watching her 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 feeling abandoned when I needed help the most, I know which one I would rather live with.