A stellar career ...but she always longed for a baby too
AT A CBI event in Edinburgh one evening earlier this week, host Shereen Nanjiani noted that Ruth Davidson would be turning 40 this autumn.
Would the Scottish Tory leader be marking the milestone, asked the BBC broadcaster?
‘I’m sure I’ll find a way of making it a significant occasion,’ replied the woman whose muscular brand of compassionate Conservatism has transformed Tory fortunes here.
Well, now we know just how significant.
Less than 24 hours after that exchange, she and long-term partner Jen Wilson announced the life-changing news that Miss Davidson was 13 weeks’ pregnant following successful IVF.
Their first child is due shortly before the politician reaches that landmark birthday.
Since taking over her day job in November 2011 – next Wednesday, she becomes the longest serving Scottish Conservative leader since devolution, surpassing the late David McLetchie – Miss Davidson has been preoccupied with nurturing her political aspirations, growing her party into a force that can compete with the SNP at Holyrood.
Thoughts of motherhood have played second fiddle to leading her troops through several successful election campaigns, including the historic Holyrood breakthrough of 2016 and the Westminster campaign last year that delivered a remarkable 13 MPs – unthinkable until Miss Davidson took the helm.
This kickboxing former Territorial Army soldier also played a key role in two pivotal referendums covering Scottish independence and Brexit. The independence referendum, in particular, occupied every weeknight and weekend for more than two years.
Miss Davidson would work in Holyrood during the day and then head out on the streets in the evening knocking doors.
Her electoral success in recent months has prompted an even greater surge in demand for her time. Lack of time and lack of sleep should prepare her well for her future life as a mother.
In an interview last year in the Daily Mail, Miss Davidson said she and her partner intended to have a ‘serious talk’ about having a baby after last June’s Westminster elections, admitting: ‘I have always had the idea that I would like to be a mother.’
They realised they were ready to be parents and Miss Davidson would try first to conceive.
Privately, she began receiving IVF treatment – snatching appointments in between her hectic work commitments.
A few weeks before the Easter break, the couple were informed she was expecting. They were
both desperate to tell friends and family as soon as possible – hence yesterday’s announcement.
Asked how she felt when told the good news, she said: ‘Really relieved, actually, because it’s quite a lot of stress and pressure.
‘You’re hoping so hard and trying to not allow yourself to hope in case it’s bad news. I actually can’t keep the smile off my face.’
Miss Davidson was quick to acknowledge how ‘incredibly grateful’ she was to the NHS staff who have seen her and guarded her privacy, just as they would for any other expectant mother.
She intends to have the baby at an NHS hospital in Edinburgh.
She said that as someone who ‘wears my heart on my sleeve’, she has struggled to keep the good news quiet until now. Firm friends in the party such as David Mundell and John Lamont were the first to know.
Theresa May was informed the last time they met last month – and the Prime Minister offered her warmest congratulations.
Congratulations also came in a tweet by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon – who promised that an SNP baby box was reserved.
Miss Davidson, MSP for Edinburgh Central, admitted there had been ‘ups and downs’ while having IVF and that she had struggled with morning sickness since becoming pregnant.
She told BBC Scotland she had suffered ‘fatigue, nausea, dizzy spells and all the rest’. But despite the bane of morning sickness, she insists it will be ‘business as usual’ until she goes on maternity leave.
Miss Davidson’s hectic lifestyle is the sort of thing that can – and often does – wreck politicians’ private lives.
Yet, paradoxically, it is during this time that she has found love and settled down.
She met marketing professional Miss Wilson, from Wexford in Ireland, a decade ago when the pair were introduced by mutual friends in Glasgow.
MISS Wilson then spent a year in Australia and they lost touch. She returned to Edinburgh and, in early 2014, the pair met up again. They were soon a firm item.
Miss Davidson, who knew she had found her life partner after three dates, proposed marriage on a short holiday in Paris after the Holyrood election in 2016.
She recalled originally wanting to pop the question near the Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre but was put off by jumble of souvenir salesmen selling tat nearby.
‘Not the most romantic place in the world, actually,’ she said.
Then she planned to ask for her partner’s hand in marriage over an upmarket meal – but that went wrong when Miss Wilson said she wanted to eat at an outdoor café.
Miss Davidson said: ‘I had the ring in its box on me and it felt bigger and bigger throughout the day. I didn’t think Jen would say no but the idea that there was just even a chance she might was terrifying.’
Tellingly, after the engagement was announced, she said: ‘Luckily for me I’m marrying a woman who’s younger than me because I’m now getting to the age where if I don’t have them [children] soon, it’s not going to happen.
‘I know that Jen would be an amazing mum.’
The couple have since bought a small house together in the Edinburgh suburbs.
Miss Davidson has often spoken of wishing to emulate the secure and loving upbringing she enjoyed with her parents, Douglas and Liz, in Lundin Links, Fife.
As an ardent campaigner for equal marriage, the Scottish Tory leader has argued that same-sex couples should not be denied the recognition and stability that she saw in her parents’ relationship.
She hopes her announcement could help to underline that it is normal for same-sex couples to have children.
Miss Davidson said: ‘It’s important people realise that this happens and it’s normal. Hopefully this takes some of the taboo or mystery away from it.’
The politician remains in the minds of many a genuine contender for the leadership of the party nationally – and said having a baby should not affect her political career.
There will be a break for maternity leave like ‘thousands of working women do every year’, she confirmed. But she expects to return to the Scottish parliament in the spring of next year.
The Scottish party’s deputy leader, Jackson Carlaw, will stand in for Miss Davidson.
She said: ‘You’ve seen right across the world lots of women in politics who have made different choices.
‘I don’t think that we should limit a woman’s choices by whether she had children or not.
‘It does require organisation to do both, you can’t have all of the time in all of the world, but you can have a family and combine that with a career, and I don’t think we should ever send a message to women that they can’t have both.’
Like any other parent, though, she will be jointly responsible for all aspects of her child’s wellbeing, including the thorny issue of discipline. She was once asked about the naughtiest thing she
did as a child – a question Mrs May infamously answered by admitting that she ran through fields of wheat.
Miss Davidson affected coyness, saying: ‘My mother would not like to see it in print.’ She then misquoted Bill Clinton when she said, ‘Let’s just say, I did inhale’ – an admission that alluded to teenage experimentation with cannabis while a pupil at Buckhaven High School.
There were healthier youthful pursuits. As the daughter of a former Partick Thistle footballer, she showed an interest in football, becoming the first girl to play for her local Largo boys’ under-14 team. She said: ‘I was a pretty mean centrehalf because when you are 12 and a girl you are usually about a foot-and-a-half taller than all the boys of that age. I wasn’t very good but I was robust in a tackle.’
Only time will tell how ‘junior’ fares on the sports field.
As the years roll by, the child’s mothers will undoubtedly have conversations with their offspring about life’s big questions – in particular God and sex.
Miss Davidson has discussed how she reconciled her sexuality with her own devout Christian faith, saying she did not realise she was gay until ‘probably quite late on’. She said: ‘I didn’t come out until my mid-twenties. There are times in your life when you feel closer to God and times when you feel further away.
‘I found the period of coming out very difficult to align with my faith but I have found my way back to God.’
She has also spoken of her disappointment that her planned same-sex marriage cannot take place in a church.
She said: ‘It is sad but we will do something instead that works for us.’
Miss Davidson told Vogue magazine earlier this year that she and Miss Wilson bought a wedding magazine after getting engaged but added: ‘It frightened us so much we put it away and didn’t talk for three months about what we wanted to do. It was terrifying.’
Marriage for this happiest of couples remains on the cards although on hold, after the £10,000 savings Miss Davidson had built up to pay for it went on vet’s fees for their pet spaniel – the dog, Wilson, was hit by a car in Holyrood Park.
Miss Davidson admitted that having a baby may well delay things further.
‘Before I look at wedding outfits I think I might like to try and lose some baby weight first, if that’s all right,’ she laughed.