'We learned the hard way… family planning is not easy' – Soc Dems leader Holly Cairns on pregnancy announcement - Irish Independent

Yesterday the Cork South-West TD took to social media to say she was expecting a baby girl and described how she and her partner were overjoyed and felt “so lucky”.

But it wasn’t a straightforward journey for the pair and Ms Cairns has spoken about her difficulty when trying to start a family.

“In my naivety, we were trying to plan around having a baby and maybe having them be a year old before a general election,” Ms Cairns said in an interview on Sunday with Miriam on RTÉ Radio 1.

Todays News in 90 Seconds - 16th June 2024

“Like a lot of couples out there we learned the hard way that it's not that easy to plan,” she added.

Ms Cairns described how she went through two miscarriages in the last year and felt it was important to talk more about her experience, as so many other women go through similar challenges when getting pregnant.

“I think that makes me feel a little bit vulnerable announcing this pregnancy because I think when it happens a couple of times, you’re wary that it might happen again, but everything is looking good for this pregnancy too.

“We’re past that danger period and so relieved because I think out of the last year, I think I spent about seven months in the first trimester,” she said.

The party leader also spoke about the difficulty in processing the miscarriages as someone in politics and in the public eye and described the physically difficulties of miscarriage.

“I had to have a D&C. Sometimes the miscarriage happens completely naturally, and most of it did in this scenario, but not all. I was actually on a connection flight, so I was in a different country having to have that procedure,” Ms Cairns said.

“First of all, they give you tablets to try and help the process along. I had a couple of rounds of them because I definitely didn't want to go under anaesthetic abroad. Just that feeling of not being at home, in your comfort zone, or whatever it is.

“But none of those worked. So, I ended up having to have a D&C, and then coming back, it was straight into our party think-in,” she added.

The think-in was Ms Cairns’ first as party leader and something she felt she could not miss.

However, she said it was times like that which made her more grateful to be a member of her party.

“There has been challenging times, and I've always been grateful to be in the Social Democrats, but I've never felt more grateful to be in a party that is so supportive of parents, bringing forward things like the parental leave bill.

“It's part of the kind of whole ethos of the party, but also the party's passion and dedication in bringing more women into politics. So, I quite literally couldn't have been more supported by the parliamentary party, and I really couldn't be more grateful to them for that.

“It made it, I'm not going to say easy. It wasn't an easy time at all, but it made it easier. It made it possible,” Ms Cairns said.

At 17 weeks pregnant, Ms Cairns said there are a few variations of her plan for taking maternity leave, depending on the date set for the next general election.

“In terms of family planning we learned that planning doesn't always work. The plan would be to take six months maternity leave.

“Deputy Cian O'Callaghan, deputy leader of the Social Democrats, would be stepping into the leader role for those six months,” Ms Cairns said.

But the Cork South West TD said that doesn’t mean that those six months are guaranteed to go uninterrupted.

“Of course, in the case of a general election, trying to do programme for government talks, that kind of thing, it is a of mitigating circumstance, and the plan would be to potentially pause maternity leave during those times,” she said.

The Social Democrats leader also spoke about her partner Barry Looney who is from the same area of Cork as Ms Cairns.

“I was going to say how we met but I’m not quite sure how we met. I’ve potentially known him forever.

“We’re from the same area, he’s from the main road so we would have gone to different primary schools in the same parish and then the same secondary school, but we didn’t really know each other that well at that time,” she said.

“We were together before actually; this is our third time. Always had a thing for him. So he’s a west Cork man, he works locally, lives locally. But also, he’s a very private person so he’s probably squirming now,” Ms Cairns said.

As the dust settles on the local and European elections, Ms Cairns said she was “so happy” with the party’s results but was “running out of ways to say no” when asked if the Labour Party and Social Democrats will join forces.

“We are focused on building our party. We are growing, we’ve doubled our seats. The Labour party went down in the number of seats. It’s not something we want or consider.

“In the last election I think it was really effective, vote left, transfer left. Absolutely we will talk to all parties after the election about government formation, that is absolutely our intention, but we have no intention of merging with any party,” the party leader said.