Trigger warning, this article contains harrowing loss and both Hannah’s and Danny’s honest experience of three, unrelated miscarriages, before the birth of their beautiful baby Blake.
Trigger warning, this article contains harrowing loss and both Hannah’s and Danny’s honest and open experience of three, unrelated miscarriages, before the birth of their beautiful daughter, Blake. We hope that this may connect with someone, and help them to feel a little less alone if you have, or are experiencing similar, though if you are not at a point where you’re ready to read related content, please click off this post now.
“When we heard the words, again, ‘I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat, it really was like your whole world collapsed around you,” for Hannah, this was all too familiar as she, and husband Danny received the news they had lost their second baby. Above image credit, Ryan Day Photography.
Hannah Jackson, now Gallagher farms in the breathtakingly beautiful Eden Valley in Cumbria with her farrier stroke farming husband Danny Gallagher. Many of you will be familiar with Hannah as The Red Shepherdess, star of SAS Who Dares Wins, CountryFile frequenter and author of ‘Call Me Red.’
Devastatingly baby loss is something Hannah has endured over recent years. Taking to her own Instagram to share her pregnancy and loss journey, speaking out openly and honestly to me, like this, was a new step, and as such both myself and Emma felt honoured that Hannah has trusted us to tell such a sensitive story, so thank you.
Their story starts as you might imagine, no sooner than the sound of wedding bells dimmed the newlyweds began trying for a baby.
“I think we can be naive to the fact that pregnancy is an easy thing, when actually it’s such a miracle you know, to make a baby.” Hannah points out, as she begins to share her story.
Married in September 2021, by December of the same year, the couple had lost their first baby as a result of a chemical pregnancy – a very early miscarriage, usually within five weeks gestation. Many who experience a chemical pregnancy, may not even know they’re even pregnant. The embryo forms in most cases, but stops developing within the first few weeks resulting in a miscarriage.
This, although the first, Hannah explains, “I felt able to get my head around. Yes, it was sad and we shed lots of tears but, I think farming with it’s life and death, helped me because I could understand it.”
Shortly after, Hannah found out she was pregnant a second time, and for anyone who has followed her pregnancy journey, this is the baby both Hannah and Danny affectionally named Popsicle.
“That was a whole different story,” Hannah begins, “I felt super super pregnant, I had all the good signs, I felt sick and super tired.” The husband and wife duo, booked an early scan, ahead of the 12 week hospital scan, given their recent experience.
It was there, that Hannah recalls, “we got those horrible words, ‘I’m sorry there’s no heartbeat’, and it was like your whole world collapsed around you, I found myself thinking, ‘again?’”
“It’s really weird, when you get pregnant, and anyone who has been will know, all of a sudden this teeny tiny, well ‘Popsicle’ as we called her, becomes your whole world straight away. You make plans, wishes and dreams for this little baby that hasn’t even been born yet and you all too easily forget you’ve got such a big, long journey ahead of you before they’re even here.”
The news was that at 9 weeks, the pregnancy was no longer viable, but she’d have to wait and let her body do ‘it’s thing’. “It was so painful. It was hard to get my head around the fact that my body was carrying life, and then all of a sudden death and that this baby we’d become attached to and formed a bond with, was leaving.”
Following this, was a check-up at the hospital, where Hannah was told she’d had an incomplete miscarriage, meaning that her ‘body hadn’t completely gotten rid of everything’.
“On Dan’s 30th birthday, I had to go in and have everything else left of the baby surgically removed. I was awake for the whole thing, just numbed.”
Sharing with me how, this was the hardest part of their journey so far, Hannah explains that, “it was a lot more painful, mentally and physically than I thought it was going to be. It will never leave me.”
Talking of the moment that the cruel reality hit, all at once, she recounts, “I remember laying there, Dan was golding my hand, he was crying and I was like hyperventilating trying to breathe through it all with gas and air.”
In the days and weeks that followed, Hannah says that together, they grieved a lot, but, “the best thing we did was speak about it. You suddenly realise there are so many people in your boat and that this happens to so many people we just don’t often talk about it, it’s almost like this forbidden thing. Though when you do, honestly, it relieves so much off your shoulders and you get to see things from different perspectives which makes you feel less alone, because you feel so so alone.”
“700 babies are lost in the UK every day.” – Saying Goodbye Charity.
Even with Dan being the amazingly supportive husband he is, “as a man you still can’t understand the unique feeling of having a baby and carrying a life, and then all of a sudden not,” Hannah explains, that is only something a woman can understand wholly.
Picking themselves up, once again, an act of sheer resilience and a testament to their marriage, Hannah fell pregnant again in June 2022, this would be the third and final miscarriage due to an Ectopic pregnancy.
“I had almost, at that point, prepared myself that every time I got pregnant this is what was going to happen,” Hannah admits, which is a harrowing thought I empathised with. The doctor referred to the couple as ‘playing pregnancy Bingo’ due to the fact each of their miscarriages were unrelated and Hannah had nothing medically wrong with her which would cause repeat miscarriages.
“We weren’t meant to be trying for a month… but ended up trying,” Hannah says as a grin flashed across her face, clearly the marriage was going strong! “Four weeks later, we found out I was pregnant, and the doctors saw us within two weeks.”
Hannah describes the experience and emotions felt when she saw her baby’s heartbeat for the first time, after three failed pregnancies, “inconsolable crying from us both. Half of me didn’t want to believe it, I wanted to guard myself until later down the line but we were of the mindset that every pregnancy deserves positivity to see it through.”
“I always think that what you feel, your baby feels, so we tried to be as positive as we could, and now we have little Blake but we always like to talk about the three before and remember them.”
In doing so, both Hannah and Danny completed The Great North Run on the 10th September only two days before meeting me, in memory of their lost babies and raising money (over £4,000) and awareness for the baby and infant loss charity: Saying Goodbye.
Above images, Ryan Day Photography.
Dan was carrying 10kg on a weighted best, which the couple worked out as roughly the weight of 3 babies if they weight 7.5lbs each. Hannah credits the charity for helping them right the way through their journey, and so when they reached out and asked if the couple would run it, she said, “yes straight away. It felt right, it felt like a full circle moment. We had lost, and not we had Blake. I was 16 weeks postpartum and had never run more than 6 miles in my life!” What a woman, and what a man is Danny, a total power couple!
Speaking of Dan, one thing I was keen to explore and not overlook is his experience, as a father. There are two sides to baby loss and family, and whilst I knew Hannah couldn’t speak for Dan, I was curious for an insight into his experience. “Men often get overlooked as people think it’s not them going through it, but they absolutely are.”
She shares, “what was hardest I think for him, is he felt so helpless throughout the whole thing, he felt like he had to be the strong one for the both of us – and he was. There were days when I didn’t want to get out onto the farm, he was the rock. I think sometimes it meant he suffered differently, I think he grieved some of it later on.”
Image credit, left is Olivia Whittaker Photography and right is Ryan Day Photography.
“When he wrote his post about the run it did hit me, because I hadn’t heard him voice some of those things, I’d never heard him say before that he struggled some days to carry on, or that he worried about whether he’d ever get to be a dad, that was the first time I’d heard those things, and it hit me in the heart,” she says with a lump in her throat and one of those laughs we do when we shake off emotion.
Both Emma and now Hannah, are familiar with this notion, as will many of you readers be, but I’m told, the first 6 months after having a baby, massively turn your life around, I am yet to find this out though was curious to know in just 4 months, how Hannah’s life had changed.
“She’s been a dream,” Hannah beams, “she’s slept from the minute she came and she is genuinely such an easy baby we are so lucky.”
Off camera, we were treated to the memory of a time when Blake had an accident in the middle of Wickes, where Hannah was caught short, and ended up changing baby Blake in the footwell of her Ford Ranger using one lucky lone nappy found in the truck. What are the odds?! Rookie error: don’t come out with a newborn, without a change of clothes or nappy bag = noted, thanks Hannah!
On the farming front, Hannah explains, “I’ll go out and do little jobs everyday, we now have bigger farming days that we save up the larger jobs for. I don’t want her to be the baby that has to come farming all the time, we go baby swimming and baby sensory. Instead of fitting her around the farm, we fit the farm around her which is quite a nice way to do it for us.”
If the content of this article has connected with you, and you would like support, visit the Saying Goodbye charity’s website for advice and support. Please know, you’re not alone in your experience.
R.A.B.I supports farmers through in-person free counselling, financial and practical support. Whilst farming doesn’t stop when you’re going through personal battles, there is support out there to help you through. We are raising money for them through The Journey’s Just Giving page here or you can donate by clicking the button below: