Her first interview and photoshoot after baby number two

‘TThe early arrival of her second daughter made Aoibhin Garrihy embrace the fact that there’s no perfection when you’re a parent. She’s relishing the more relaxed experience of motherhood, second time around, and talks to Sarah Caden about how the notion of bouncing back is ‘crap’, how she’s found peace with the mom-shamers and she won’t send her daughters up Mount Everest

he first time,” Aoibhin Garrihy says of motherhood, “you cling to the part of yourself that’s familiar, and, to me, that was getting up and getting out and being a do-er. And I was holding on to that. I was a person who was always on the go, a busy body. I didn’t want motherhood to change that. I held on to that the first time around.

“This time, I wanted it to be different,” says Aoibhin, now mother to 19-month-old Hanorah and baby Liobhan, who was born at the end of November last year.

“With a first baby,” Aoibhin adds, “there’s an element of trying to prove yourself and be unchanged by it. You’re not going to let it completely transform you. You’re determined that it won’t be the case that you’re Aoibhin one minute, but a mom the next, and not Aoibhin any more. You tell yourself the baby will just slot in and life will continue as normal.

“But babies don’t just slot in,” she concludes with a laugh. “They don’t. They take over.”

Aoibhin’s laugh is that of a person who sees it as a friendly baby takeover. She’s going with the flow, and everything is a little less perfect this second time around, but Aoibhin is OK with that.

What you learn by your second baby, Aoibhin adds, is that the newborn, sleep-deprived, near-sleepwalking days go by very quickly. It’s precious time, and, this time, Aoibhin’s nesting and nurturing at home in Co Clare with her two little girls.

“I suppose because Hanorah was born in the summer, I was out and about more, and didn’t have that sense of wanting to hibernate the way I do now, with Liobhan, but I also feel I have less to prove,” Aoibhin says.

Baby Liobhan came early — two weeks early, according to Aoibhin, one week according to her doctor, she says with a laugh — and gave them all a surprise. It was, in that sense, a very different experience from the get-go, to the one she had with Hanorah.

Aoibhin was induced with Hanorah, but with Liobhan, she was planning to have her nails done as prep for an awards event, when it became clear that the baby was not waiting around for a due date.

Midnight dash

Then, that night, they were into the situation of calling for relatives to stay the night with Hanorah, while Aoibhin and her hotelier husband, John Burke, made the dash to the hospital in Galway.

“I wasn’t going to have her at the side of the road,” Aoibhin says. “But it was a drive through the night to be on the safe side.”

Burke shared on social media a photograph of a serene-looking Aoibhin, in an on-trend maxi dress, practising her breathing in the hospital. She announced the early arrival of their second little girl, and how they were “simply in love” with her, also on social media. A very cute video of Hanorah, meeting her baby sister for the first time and stroking her cheek as she looked her up and down, was uploaded to Aoibhin’s Instagram.

Online is very much Aoibhin’s domain these days, and frequently now, you see her referred to as an influencer, though in the mom-zone and the zone of the kind of woman you’d like as a rock-of-good-sense friend. She is, you could say, a mini-Gwynnie, mixed with the Irish likeability of Mary Kennedy.

Aoibhin doesn’t go for the influencer tag herself, however. She regards herself as an entrepreneur, citing her wellness venture, Beo, as her main job, while singing the praises, also, of Knight & Day jewellery, with whom she has been associated with for six seasons now, and whose latest shoot fills these pages.

Acting, she says, has been “parked”.

Aoibhin has spoken in the past, on these pages, and to me, about how she has left acting behind, for now. Hers has been an interesting modern trajectory from a young woman keen to make her way as an actress, to a woman who is more interested in carving out the terms of her own career than waiting for roles to come to her.

Aoibhin Garrihy first came to public attention in Fair City, almost a decade ago. She left the RTE drama three years later, but somehow Aoibhin is one of those rare people who can leave a soap and still hold on to the fanbase and a public affection.

She built on that popularity with a turn on

Dancing With The Stars in 2017, in which she came second and was, arguably, robbed of the first prize. By that time, Aoibhin had married

“You’re determined that it won’t be the case that you’re Aoibhin one minute, but a mom the next and not Aoibhin any more. You tell yourself the baby will just slot in and life will continue as normal. But babies don’t just slot in”

John Burke, who runs his family business, the Armada Hotel in Co Clare. Aoibhin had been half-reared in Co Clare, though she lived and went to school in Dublin’s Castleknock.

Best of both worlds

Both of her parents, Eugene and Clare, are from Co Clare, and have a house and business interests there. Aoibhin, along with her younger sisters, Ailbhe, who now works with her; and Doireann, now an RTE star in her own right, spent their childhoods back and forth to Co Clare, and it felt like a natural move for Aoibhin to marry a man from the county, and, ultimately, end up living there.

“I come up to Dublin so often for work that it feels like I get the best of both worlds,” says Aoibhin, who feels herself drawn less and less to the hustle and bustle of the city. The outdoorsy life she enjoys in Clare soothes her soul and suits her personality, she says, and her work can now, thanks to technology, see her based anywhere she chooses.

And Aoibhin chooses Co Clare. It’s a wonderful life into which to bring her pair of little girls, too, she says.

“In Hanorah, I see the benefits of living here,” Aoibhin says. “I go for a sea swim every Sunday and it’s my therapy, and she comes along with me, and she loves the sea air. I see the difference it makes to her, and I think she sees and appreciates what we have here in the west.

“My sisters and I had the best of both worlds growing up,” she adds. “and every long weekend and summer was spent down here and we loved it. For me, it’s less chaotic, it’s less of a rat-race. Mum and Dad always worked hard, but it’s important to make memories. When you’re self-employed, when you have your own business, that can be hard. And technology makes it too easy for us to be on and distracted all the time.

“I’m busy, still, because there is no maternity leave in my world, and John is very busy as well, and I have to keep reminding him that this is a very short time with [young children], and it will come and go, and you have to savour every minute and get off the phones. It’s not easy, but children are so receptive and they know when you’re just phoning it in and not really paying attention to them. We probably need, as a society, to create a shift when it comes to work-life balance.”

Aoibhin says that she’s noticed a positive shift in terms of social media since she was pregnant with Hanorah and just starting to build up a following online.

With her first pregnancy, she kept very fit and busy, safely stretching herself to continue enjoying the extensive walking and hill- and mountain-climbing that she and John had always enjoyed together. When she and John climbed Carrauntoohil during that pregnancy, she didn’t anticipate the online backlash that came her way.

People said she was putting the baby at risk, and she energetically defended herself, something she might not bother to do now, with the benefit of hindsight and experience. These days, Aoibhin says, she’s better at letting the interfering or unhelpful comments and commentators roll off her.

Sharing life online

“But the mom-shaming is a real thing,” Aoibhin says. “And there’s been a small element of it again since Liobhan arrived. People probably don’t mean to intrude, or can’t help themselves from telling you not to do this or that, which I find fascinating.

“In one way, they’re just airing their knowledge, and Instagram can be a great place to gather information and there’s a real community online, which is great, because being a new mother can be very isolating. So it’s somewhere you can find a community, like a real-life parenting group, and that can be so helpful, particularly in the middle of the night.

“But when you’re feeling vulnerable and hormonal, the smallest thing can set you off,” she says. “And people might mean well, but sometimes you just feel like you don’t need it, and you want to work it out for yourself. Personally, online, I try not to tell people what to do and I try to be accessible and people can direct-message me if they want. But in terms of people making comments about me, I accept that if you share your life online, you have to let people have their opinions.”

To a point, she says with a laugh.

Second time around, Aoibhin says, there is a sense of being more relaxed, which also makes you aware that women demand so much of themselves, and are often so hard on themselves, too.

“This idea of bouncing back is such a

load of crap,” says Aoibhin. “I don’t feel the same need to do that this time. The winter helps as well, and you can have those duvet days with the baby. You need that recovery period. It takes nine months to grow a baby and you need nine months to recover, too.

“But there is that pressure on women to go back to ‘normal’,” she says, “and we’re probably not doing ourselves or society or other mums a service by presenting motherhood as if it’s not life-changing and transformative. You have to let nature and motherhood take its natural course and not fight it, and pretending it’s a small thing is not good.”

That said, says Aoibhin, laughing, when her father rings and she’s too stressed to talk to him and she’s covered in puke and there’s a leaking nappy of poo, he has taken to reminding her that his mother had 11 children and managed to cope.

Aoibhin did the shoot on these pages when Liobhan was only six weeks old. Having done six season launches with Knight & Day by now, she knew as soon as she was pregnant when the launch timings would be and knew that she’d have to be photographed quite soon after giving birth. It’s not a time that any woman really feels quite herself or keen on being captured on camera, but it wasn’t only Aoibhin who rose to the occasion — Knight & Day did, too.

Soft and vulnerable

“My first shoot with them was in 2017, after Dancing With The Stars,” she recalls. “So I was in the best shape of my life. The next, I was pregnant with Hanorah; then post-partum; then, last year, eight months’ pregnant with Liobhan; and now, six weeks after her arrival.

“It’s not ideal,” she says, with a laugh. “You’re so soft and vulnerable after a baby. It’s not just weight; everything changes. Even the fact that I’m breastfeeding meant that through the day of the shoot, my breast size changed up and down. But I had to put all that out of my head.”

“You’re standing there, pregnant or just after giving birth,” she says of the various Knight & Day shoots, “and they’re saying, ‘work it’ and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know what to work right now!’

“But the fact that I’ve had two babies over the six seasons with the company and they’ve never batted an eye says so much about them. It’s amazing for any brand to stick with someone who has fluctuated so much, but also, there’s so much discrimination when it comes to women and such an aesthetic demand, and there are loads of models they could have used instead, but they didn’t. It’s an

honour to work with a brand that honours women in all their stages and sizes, and it’s a lovely message to send.”

To feel accepted in all the glories of motherhood reinforces that belief that it is something to be embraced and enjoyed rather than kicked against. Aoibhin feels a great sense of ease second time around, with her new baby and with Hanorah, who seems like “such a giant grown-up person” now that tiny baby Liobhan has arrived.

There have been “a few hissy fits”, but mostly Hanorah seems to love being the big sister, and Aoibhin is delighted for her to have a sister. “Of course, all you want is to have a healthy baby,” she says, “but, yeah, I wanted her to have a sister. I am so tight with my sisters, that I really wanted that for her. Of course we have had stages of killing each other, but really, we are so lucky to be so close.”

Aoibhin’s parents continue to divide their time between Dublin and Co Clare, and though they are “besotted” with their granddaughters, she doesn’t see them moving permanently to the countryside. They have the best of both worlds, so why would they, says Aoibhin, who clearly admires the example they have set.

“Grandchildren have given the whole family a new lease of life,” Aoibhin says. “Especially now that Hanorah’s personality is emerging and she’s great crack. We’re all making a conscious effort to spend time together as a family,

I think. In your 20s, you’re busy and you kind of take family for granted, and you think these good times will be around forever. Since the girls arrived, I think we realise that these times have to be cherished. The girls have brought the magic back.”

Life is a series of stages, Aoibhin’s message seems to be, from her zone of hibernation and baby-love. Life changes and you adapt, and fighting it is not only futile, but a distraction from that which is precious and fleeting.

Aoibhin Garrihy is taking things gently this second time around and, she says, her husband, who summited Everest in 2017, is taking a leaf out of her book, for now. He hasn’t said anything about itchy feet lately, Aoibhin says with a laugh, but no doubt they will return.

She feels that on-the-go, “busy body” Aoibhin will be back, too, but not too soon. Hanorah has their love of the outdoors, she thinks. In time, she’ll be up the hills and mountains with her parents, and baby Liobhan won’t be far behind her.

“Do I want them to summit Everest?” asks Aoibhin with a laugh. “Probably not. But we’ll see. Not yet.”