Ciara Kelly’s first pregnancy was unplanned. The broadcaster, doctor and mother of four describes how she “nearly had a heart attack” on learning the news. “I found out I was pregnant in a toilet in a bar in Mallorca or Menorca……It was my first day on the holiday. And one of my first thoughts - because I was a junior doctor, I was in my twenties - was ‘now I can’t have a drink and I’m on holidays’“, she tells me on the latest episode of the Conversations with Parents podcast. “I think I was 100% in denial about what it was all going to mean”.
Ciara discusses how people responded to the news and describes some of the stigma that remained. She shares some of the comments she received, including being told if she “wanted to be an unmarried mother… that I should have known better than to be expecting other people to put up with my shenanigans”, when she looked to make a small tweak to her working hours pattern during later pregnancy.
“It definitely wasn’t the 50s, 60, and the 70s when I was pregnant, but it wasn’t like it was all ok”, she explains.
Ciara loves teenagers. Yes, really. And she explains why. She also feels there’s certain times during parenthood that we’re “pretending that things are more interesting than they are. And pretending that things are more enjoyable than they are”.
Some of Ciara’s children have ADHD and she believes she has ADHD too. “When they’re going through the reason why the diagnosis is positive, and you tick every box yourself. And they’re also saying it’s hereditary…and you realise ‘oh this is me’.” She explains the ways in which it makes her life more challenging and offers her advice to parents who have ADHD themselves, or whose children have ADHD.
Plus she explains how to turn ADHD strengths to your advantage.
With a role in the public eye, Ciara sometimes has to deal with disapproval and even disparaging commentary. She tells me how she deals with this. “I saw someone describing me on the internet recently as a ‘shock jock’, and I laughed out loud, because I thought ‘Jesus you must be easily shocked if I’m a shock jock’”.
“I think sometimes people are slightly shocked by a woman offering an opinion”, she continues, offering some of the responses she has received over the years. “I don’t enjoy rubbing people up the wrong way….but if I believe something will I say it? Even though it might rub people up the wrong way? Yes I will”.
“I think there’s a value is dissent and I think Ireland is a particularly conformist country”, she says. While adding that she is not conservative, Ciara tells me, “I respect the dissenting voice, I think we need it. Otherwise we are like an echo-chamber of lemmings”.
She discusses how she manages the backlash she sometimes receives; how her children feel about it; and talks about what happened when one of her children tried to jump to her defence.
Ciara also shares how her job as a GP has lent itself to having open conversations around difficult topics with her children. And talks about how parents can catastrophise certain things when it comes to their children going online – and more
Plus I test her on modern parenting terms to see if she’s really down with the kids.
Listen to this episode of Conversations with Parents on the player above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Presented by Jen Hogan. Produced by Aideen Finnegan.
Brought to you in association with Avonmore Super Milk.
