Bone-crushingly sleep deprived!
Beaming with pride. But as she now returns to work, politician Davidson admits motherhood has left her...
GRINNING with delight at her baby son, motherhood certainly seems to suit Ruth Davidson.
The leader of the Scottish Conservatives – hailed by many as the great hope of the party and touted as a future British prime minister – is cherishing the last days of her maternity leave with little Finn before she returns this week to full-time politics.
For the past six months, Ms Davidson has been living worlds away from the Scottish parliament in what she dubs ‘Finnland’ with her Irish-born fiancée, Jen Wilson. She is fully absorbed in meeting the demands, not of politicians, but of her blue-eyed boy.
Finn has arguably been putting her through her paces with far more rigour than her demanding political career ever did.
In short, she is exhausted. Or as she describes it, ‘bone-crushingly sleep deprived’ – something of a novelty for a woman who has transformed the fortunes ofher party in Scotland, and even saved Theresa May’s government in a snap 2017 election by securing a crucial 13 Tory seats, the highest number since 1983.
‘I naively thought that, because in the final few weeks of election campaigning you don’t sleep and are working 17-hour days easily, it would be like that and I would just have to get through it,’ she admits in an Edinburgh café, with her son gurgling on her knee.
‘But it’s a completely different kind of sleep deprivation. It’s worse than people tell you.’
Davidson, 40, the first leader of a British political party to give birth in office – and with a same-sex partner – will now be handing over the childcare reins to Ms Wilson. But she insists: ‘I’m not doing anything that thousands of women don’t do every year and it’s the same stresses and strains. I could’ve done with another few weeks, but there was never any suggestion that I would not be returning to do something I really enjoy. I will still give the job 100%. It’s just No2 on my priority list now.’
The path to parenthood was not easy, and Ruth describes going to extreme lengths to hide her IVF.
She had to inject fertility drugs in the toilets at Geneva airport on her way to the World Economic Forum in Davos, she reveals, and boarded a flight to Helmand two hours after having an embryo implanted.
It worked first time, but she was forced to have a Caesarean-section in October, two weeks before her due date, amid concerns about Finn’s size. ‘The consultant was fairly insistent that it would be a better idea if he came out soon. Two days later, he was delivered early at over 10lb,’ she said.