Rosanna Davison on feeling both joy and guilt after falling pregnant naturally

“I had accepted the fact that I thought I couldn’t have a baby myself. I had made peace with it and had spoken openly about it, so it was like reversing what I thought I knew about myself, which is a really strange feeling,” she tells Magazine+.

“Mostly, we were obviously overjoyed at being able to get pregnant naturally and having two healthy babies,” she admits. But it came with complicated feelings, too.

“I had a lot of, sort of, guilt… for the women and the couples I had spoken to who were really struggling to conceive or who had been through miscarriages or surrogacy,” she says.

The former Miss World gave birth to twin boys, Hugo and Oscar, in 2020, making daughter Sophia an older sister. Sophia was born the year prior, via gestational surrogacy.

Rosanna and her husband, Wesley, had opted to start their family with a surrogate, given the couple’s heartbreaking experience of fertility up to that point. As a result, getting pregnant with the twins was a total shock for the pair.

“It took a long time to get my head around the fact that I actually was able to have not one, but two babies, that looked like they were going to have a healthy pregnancy,” she remembers.

That would be an overwhelming experience for any mother, but what about one in the public eye?

“People were so supportive and kind, and we had so much love and support when we announced our pregnancy,” she says. “

It took a long time to even tell friends we were expecting twins. I think it was because I’d spoken so publicly about the fact that we couldn’t have a baby naturally and we had to rely on a surrogate to have our family.”

There would be one last pocket of turbulence before Rosanna and Wesley could bring their boys home though, as they were born prematurely.

“I knew that they would be delivered at about 36 weeks, I was told that due to the nature of them being an identical twin pregnancy — they shared a placenta — that I’d be brought in at 36 weeks for a scheduled C-section.

“Coincidentally, I went in for my last routine scan and they found that there was an issue with blood flow in the placenta to one of the twins. So they decided to get me into hospital that day, to deliver them the very next morning.

“Luckily I had my bags packed, which is a piece of advice I would share with any pregnant woman, is to just make sure you’re well prepared for anything that could happen,” she laughs.

Thankfully, her two boys would be OK in the end. “But they spent a week in the neonatal unit at the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street, where they were cared for by the most incredible staff. I can’t speak highly enough of them,” Rosanna gushes.

“They just gave us all the information, advice and reassurance we needed .... we knew the boys would be arriving around 35/36 weeks but still, nothing really prepares you for how tiny they are.”

It prompted the model to team up with baby brand Pampers, ahead of World Prematurity Day on November 17.

“Really, the purpose of the campaign is to highlight the fact that Pampers are the only nappy brand that makes premature baby sized nappies,” she explains, adding that they donate said small nappies to maternity hospitals all over Ireland.

They would certainly need the tiny nappies. “Hugo, the smallest twin, was 4lb7oz, and Oscar, the bigger guy, was 5lb5oz.

“They weren’t by any means the tiniest babies in there. I think the reassurance — and what the campaign hopes to highlight as well — is that thanks to modern medicine, science and technology, babies born prematurely are in incredible hands and have a really high chance of survival. It’s reassuring to know as a parent, if you do give birth to a premature baby.”

Now, after years of hope and heartache, Rosanna and her husband have a very different story to tell — one of a big family, and three babies under four.

“Now there’s a ridiculous amount of toddlers,” she laughs.

The many phases of motherhood, and her journey to get there, are laid out in her most recent book, When Dreams Come True, which came out in 2021.

“I look back and wonder how I did it [write] because I really was in a haze. Like, especially when you’ve been pregnant and hormones are still leaving your system, and then we were in a haze of sleep deprivation as well,” she looks back.

It helped that Rosanna is a self-professed night owl. “I’m the type of person who will send emails at 11 on a Saturday night because, you know, I have no social life,” she laughs.

The book is still resonating with readers: “I still get messages and emails from people saying how helpful the book has been and how much it’s a source of comfort, so that’s really nice.”

It’s a reminder of the value of being open and honest about things we tend to be ashamed of, according to the influencer.

“I didn’t have the confidence to talk about it until it had worked out for us. It’s very difficult to talk about unless you have a happy ending. I really commend people that do,” Rosanna adds.

“I was kind of fed up with feeling ashamed of my own body, and ashamed of the fact that I was born with the physical ability to have a baby yet I still wasn’t able to… I went through all the emotions of shame, embarrassment, anger at my body and myself and I was fed up with that. It was therapeutic for me to talk about it — and it still is.”