Sarah McInerney is known for her self-assured, cool and calm approach to interviewing politicians, but she has now spoken about the anxiety that plagued her second pregnancy.
The RTÉ Radio presenter has also shared how becoming a mother of two children wasn’t as straightforward as she hoped.
“My first pregnancy was a dream,” she said. “I absolutely flew through it and thought, ‘oh, I’m a natural mother. I’m just made to do this.’ The second pregnancy was the complete opposite.”
“The big thing which I wasn’t prepared for was the anxiety in my second pregnancy. I don’t know why. I just think, with my first baby, I didn’t realise how many things could go wrong.”
There is a four-year age gap between McInerney’s children, but this was not part of “the plan ... to the extent that I planned anything when it comes to my family. I would have planned probably about two years in my head.”
Difficulties becoming pregnant the second time around led her to seek fertility help. “I’d actually gone to a consultant and we had got fertility meds prescribed to me.”
In the first episode of a new season of the Conversations with Parents podcast, McInerney discusses her decision to look for help and reveals the unexpected timing and excitement of finding out she was pregnant again.
“I was at home alone in the bathroom and I screamed. I couldn’t believe it. It was amazing. It really was. And it was such a relief.”
McInerney is now well familiar with the working-parent juggle, but she recalls her introduction to the world of being a working mother and a manager’s reaction to discovering McInerney was pregnant.
“I went into one of my managers and I said, ‘oh, I’m expecting a baby’, very excited I was expecting a baby. Some things are ingrained in your memory. He sat back and he folded his hands and said, ‘oh, I suppose these things can’t be helped’.”
McInerney says she loves her radio job, but that doesn’t stop her missing her children when work hours don’t align well with spending time with her boys. On The Irish Times podcast, she discusses this juggle, and shares how a constant low-level panic encouraged her to seek a better work-life balance.
Interrogation may be her questioning style on the airwaves, but she’s learned it’s not always the most effective way of getting information from her children. “Who’d you meet? What did you do? Anyone cry? Anyone laugh? Were you happy? Were you sad? Try and get all the news. It doesn’t work.”
She shares the value she learned of “just being around”, admitting that it’s “very hard for working mums to hear that”.
McInerney also discusses raising boys, why she avoids speaking as Gaeilge with her colleague Cormac Ó hEadhra, her friendship with Miriam O’Callaghan, and how she feels about the approaching teenage years. Plus we relive the childhood trauma of Watership Down and Plague Dogs, and she explains why she turned down a government adviser job.
This episode is presented by Jen Hogan and produced by Aideen Finnegan and Andrew McNair. Listen here, on irishtimes.com/podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Brought to you in association with Avonmore Super Milk.
