‘Innocence of pregnancy forever taken after a loss’

A mum talks about her harrowing experience of stillbirth, how she and her partner coped with the trauma, and the subsequent joy of having a healthy baby

Mike Mulcahy and Eleanor Fitzgerald with their daughter Rose. ‘We wouldn’t have Rose if it weren’t for Jack. Essentially, Rose is our gift from Jack.’ Picture: Brendan Gleeson

Elanor Fitzgerald had not been planning to get pregnant in early 2022. The Limerick woman was training as a barrister in King’s Inns, and she and Mike, now her fiancé, had been casually seeing each other.

“The scariest thing I’d ever done was tell him I was pregnant. From day one, he said: ‘We’ll give it a go, I’ll stand by you’. And from then, it was unspoken that we were together, it all felt very right.