NICOLA’S TORMENT OVER HER LOST BABY
First Minister opens her heart about agony of miscarriage
FIRST Minister Nicola Sturgeon has spoken publicly for the first time about her anguish at losing a baby.
Miss Sturgeon, who is childless, has revealed in a new book that she miscarried during the early stages of pregnancy when she was aged 40.
The 46-year-old SNP leader, who is married to the party’s chief executive Peter Murrell, was preparing to share her good news with friends when tragedy struck. But rather than recover at home after losing the baby, she bravely attended a high-profile public engagement, on January 3, 2011, to mark the 40th anniversary of the Ibrox disaster in which 66 football fans died.
Photographs taken on the day showed her with eyes shut and looking distressed. In the new book, written by Mandy Rhodes of Holyrood Magazine, Miss Sturgeon admits she does not know if she could have ‘had it all’ and gone on to lead Scotland’s government as a mother.
She said: ‘If the miscarriage hadn’t happened, would I be sitting here as First Minister right now? It’s an unanswerable question, I just don’t know. I’ve
thought about it but I don’t know that answer. I’d like to think “yes” because I could have shown that having a child wasn’t a barrier to all this, but in truth I don’t know.’
An intensely private person, Miss Sturgeon has not gone public about the tragedy before because she did not want to be defined by it.
She had not allowed the story to be told because she was aware that some girls who look to her as a role model might conclude that women must sacrifice part of their lives to climb the career ladder.
In the new book, Scottish National Party Leaders, she said: ‘Having a baby might have so fundamentally changed our lives that things would have taken a different path, but if somebody gave me the choice now to turn back the clock 20 years and say you can choose to start to think about
‘Fundamentally changed our lives’
this much earlier and have children, I’d take that.
‘But if the price of that was not doing what I’ve gone on to do, I wouldn’t accept that, no.’
Had she not lost the baby, Miss Sturgeon would have been six months pregnant going into the 2011 Scottish parliamentary election campaign period, as deputy to then SNP leader Alex Salmond.
In July, Prime Minister Theresa May revealed her heartbreak at being unable to conceive a child with her husband Philip May.
The Prime Minister said she had to ‘accept the hand they were dealt’ and found comfort in their happy marriage when they were given the devastating blow.
On Friday, the First Minister announced the start of a three-month campaign to woo those who voted No in the 2014 independence referendum.
The question of her attitude to motherhood was aired publicly as recently as last November, when Miss Sturgeon was featured on Radio Four’s Desert Island Discs.
She told host Kirsty Young then that she had never sacrificed motherhood for the sake of her political career.
She insisted in the interview that she had never made ‘a cold and calculated decision’ to put her career ahead of her family.
Miss Sturgeon said people who criticised her ‘know nothing about the reality’.
She added: ‘The assumption that people sometimes make is that I have made a cold, calculated decision to put my career ahead of having a family and that is not true.
‘Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don’t. Don’t get me wrong, I have no regrets – if I could turn the clock back ten or 20 years, I wouldn’t want to fundamentally change the path my life has taken.’
Law graduate Miss Sturgeon cut her political teeth handing out SNP leaflets on the streets of Glasgow. She was elected to the Scottish parliament in 1999 and served successively as the SNP’s spokesman for education, health and justice.
When Alex Salmond resigned following the defeat of the Yes campaign in the 2014 independence referendum, Miss Sturgeon was the sole nominee to replace him as party leader and First Minister.
Miss Sturgeon married Mr Murrell on July 16, 2010, six months before her reported miscarriage.
She has often demonstrated a strong affection for children during a large number of public engagements.
Nobody from the SNP was available to comment last night.