“My waters broke about six o’clock in the evening, I got contractions at 11pm and she was born at one minute to 12,” she says of that momentous day when her baby daughter weighed in at a fairly hefty 4.2kg (9lb and 4oz) at the South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel. The stitching up afterwards, she recalls, was worse than the birth.
Back home, she struggled to recover and look after her newborn. She has always believed “if you’re not right physically, you’re not right mentally” but “I found it hard to take care of myself”.