Hollyoaks actress Kirsty-Leigh Porter loves being a mum and her three-year-old daughter Nala Rai lights up her life. But Kirsty-Leigh's road to motherhood was traumatic and her heart was broken in 2018 when she lost her first daughter Penny-Leigh, 29 weeks and three days into her pregnancy. Dark days followed before she became a mum again. Holding baby Nala in her arms almost two years later was a huge healing moment.
Now Kirsty-Leigh would love to have “a truckload more children”. - but she’s too scared things will go wrong again to try for another baby.
“When I was pregnant with Nala it was just literally trying to get through each day,” she says. “I didn’t relax and enjoy it as much as I probably should have because it’s a blur. It was just trying to get through each day and just get her here safely. I could not go through the anxiety of being pregnant again,” she tells OK!. “It was a race to get Nala here safe rather than enjoying my pregnancy. I did wonder, ‘Why do I feel like this? Is this anxiety normal?’ And now I realise it’s completely normal. It’s sad because I would love more children but I just don’t think I could put myself mentally and emotionally through that again. We’re left feeling lucky that we’ve got children. I always say I have one in heaven and one on Earth but both are in my heart forever.”
Loneliness overwhelmed Kirsty-Leigh in the aftermath of Penny-Leigh's death. In the end it was the support of strangers that helped her through, and the desire to make her daughter proud.
“You never get over it, you never forget. There’s always going to be a part of you that’s missing,” says Kirsty-Leigh. “I remember one day when I got up and I thought, ‘I can’t carry on like this any more, I have to do something. I do a lot of writing. Once
I’ve written what’s running through my head, I feel like I’ve offloaded a lot.”
Kirsty-Leigh's turning point came when she decided to live for her daughter and make her proud.
“My turning point was thinking, ‘I’ve now got the best guardian angel in the world that I could ever ask for and I’m going to wake up every morning and do her proud,’” she explains. “That kept me going. I thought, ‘She doesn’t want to see me in bed grieving, I want to make her proud.’”
Posting on Instagram helped and Kirsty-Leigh found strength from others who were lost in grief just like her.
“I felt better reaching out,” she says. “I remember getting a lot of messages of support from total strangers on social media and reading every single one – and finding so much strength in their messages. It’s such a lonely, dark place, you feel like you’re the only woman in the world who’s just lost a baby. Then you realise that there’s this whole secret community that is just waiting full of strength and support for you. I found myself starting to heal and I became part of this baby loss group, this gang of people that you never really wanted to be a part of. The love and the strength of that group helped me to get better and stronger each day.”
Baby Nala Rai was born in November 2020, almost two years after her older sister was born.
“I was so, so elated and so happy that this baby girl was here and she was in my arms and everything was great and she was OK. And then came the sadness of not having Penny,” explains Kirsty-Leigh. “It was a total contrast of feelings and being hormonal and emotional, I don’t think I stopped crying..”
Kirsty-Leigh chose the name Nala Rai to honour her first daughter. She explains, “Nala means a fresh breath of air, it means water, earth, new life. Rai is short for Rainbow because she’s a rainbow baby. I want Nala to know she has a big sister. I don’t know how or when I’m going to tell her that.”
Now Kirsty-Leigh is telling her story on screen in Hollyoaks. This week her character Leela Lomax will get married to her fiancé Joel Dexter and later take herself to hospital for a check-up after realising she hasn’t felt the baby kick for a while. Still wearing her wedding dress, she’ll be told her baby has died.
“This is Leela’s story, but it’s also mine. It’s my reality,” explains the actress. “I knew that I would tell it one day. I feel like now is the time to give back to the people who helped me. There are no arrows saying ‘go this way’ when you’re going through this. It’s for people who are going through it or have been through it, so they can feel they’re not alone. It’s also for me to process it, I still process it every day. You’re never going to fully get to the end. It’s just going to be, ‘Why did that happen?’ That’s constant and that’s OK.”
The storyline has been sensitively written with lots of input from Kirsty-Leigh and is packed with information for viewers. She doesn’t want to make new mums anxious, but she is aware this story has the power to save lives and start important conversations.
“It’s trying not to scare people, but I want to show that it’s normal to feel reduced movements – as long as you notice it and you do something about it,” says Kirsty-Leigh. “My maternity ward said, ‘No matter how small you think this matter is, if you ar worried or even if you’re not so worried, still make the phone call, still check…’ People watching this who are pregnant might instantly put their hand to their tummy. Even if we get that, that’s brilliant, that’s a job done because that’s exactly what we want. It could save a life. That’s the goal.”
Watch Hollyoaks on Channel 4 – stream or watch live, weekdays, 7pm, E4
Kirsty-Leigh is an ambassador for the Mariposa Trust, mariposatrust.org
