Hollyoaks actress Jessica Fox has revealed she's expecting her first child with her husband Nicholas Willes after going through two devastating miscarriages last year. Jessica, 39, who has played Nancy Hayton in the Channel Four soap since 2005, bravely shared about their loss as she shared about their 'miracle' baby.
The soap star has been inundated with messages of congratulations and support from her co-stars moved by her heartbreaking story. Jessica snuggled up to musician Nicholas in a series of Instagram snaps as they held their precious baby scans. The couple wore 'mum' and 'dad' caps as Jessica spoke of their difficult journey.
She told fans: "This week has been baby loss awareness week. So it seemed a good (and bad) time to share our story at the end of such an important and heartbreaking campaign and to show our support to all those who have been or are going through a similar journey.
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"Trigger warning: Trying to conceive and conceiving after loss. Please make use of the mute or unfollow button if any of this is too much for you. Out of difficulties, grow miracles. Due spring 2023."
Opening up to her followers she explained: "Nick and I have been on a rocky road to get to this point. Miscarriage is awful, there is no other word for it. It robs you of the future you had planned, your faith in your body, it's isolating, lonely, frightening and something nobody seems to talk about. It's incredibly painful, it's pass out in your bathroom painful.
"It takes away the joy and excitement when and if you choose (and are able) to get pregnant again. It's replaced by anxiety, stress and more fear than I ever could have imaged. Nick and I lost two babies in 2021. Both losses were at the end of the first trimester and completely heartbreaking."
Jessica told how hard she found it when she went through her second miscarriage while her Hollyoaks character became pregnant in the soap, calling it a "cruel twist of fate." She wrote: "'In a cruel twist of fate, when I got pregnant the second time, the character I play on Hollyoaks was pregnant too. On Twitter and Instagram I would see comments that I must be pregnant in real life. At 5ft1 I looked pregnant almost straight away and I had started to put on weight.
"Maybe people thought I'd gone method and was really committed to the storyline. I started to show at work, I felt very smug that I'd have the most realistic baby bump ever. Maybe my actual baby could play my child on screen?! The wardrobe department, who are the kindest people on earth, were the only ones who knew I was expecting.
"And then I lost the baby. On the Friday, I had a real bump, on the Monday I was putting on a fake one. It was every bit as horrific as it sounds. I tried to keep it a secret and get on with it."
She recalled: "As Nancy’s pregnancy progressed, mine didn’t. Putting on the bigger bumps, going to set and having well meaning people say it suited me, or think it was real, ask if I wanted children or when I was going to have children was a daily part of life and each time felt like a fresh blow."
Then, speaking about when it came to filming the birth scene screened in June, Jessica said: "The inevitable happened and I had to film the birth. I hve never been more terrified to film something in my life, Particularly as Nancy had been given a speech on her two previous miscarriage. It was all a bit close to the bone.
"On my due date, at work, I was handed a beautiful tiny baby and I cried uncontrollably throughout the whole scene. The director, not knowing my situation must have thought I was fantastic. I was broken."
Jessica says her experiences took a toll on her mental health. "When I finally finished the storyline and didn't have to wear the bump again I realised just how much of a weight I'd been carrying," she penned. My mental health was s***. I'd given up on sleep, I'd developed a fear of driving, intrusive thoughts, and we think a form of OCD."
Then, while on holiday in Greece, "I saw the most beautiful rainbow, I was pregnant by the time I got home." Jessica is now being "monitored closely" and is 20 weeks along her pregnancy. "Every time we have a scan and I hold my breath till they tell me they see a heartbeat and I cry every time," she said.
Kirsty-Leigh Porter, who welcomed a daughter Nala in December 2020 two years after her daughter Penny-Leigh was tragically stillborn, said: "My beautiful friend. I adore you." And Jessamy Stoddart, who in August revealed she was expecting her first child with husband Ryan O'Gorman after a difficult journey to pregnancy, said: "Beautiful lady. So proud of you You were my rock & I am so excited for the next bit of the adventures xxx"
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