
Birth: there's nothing quite like it, and it's clear no two birth stories are the same. Which is why we're asking everyday women and some of our favourite celebrity mums to share theirs, in Mamamia's My Birth Story series.
This week we profile TV presenter and fashion stylist Deauvanné Athanasakis Jarvis, otherwise known as Ma, mum to an eight-year-old boy and five-year-old girl*. ma Stylista
Following on from two devastating miscarriages, London-born Deauvanné and then husband Johnn y were hoping her third pregnancy would be relatively stress free.
“The first 12 weeks we had the fear that things would go wrong, so once we received the all clear we were so happy,” Deauvanné said.
“I actually loved the feeling of being pregnant and watching my tummy expand. For a few weeks in the second trimester it was a real joy, but quite quickly it all changed.”
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One morning as she was getting ready for work, Deauvanné knocked the back of her thigh on the end of their bed and felt a sharp pain.
“At first I thought nothing of it but as I left for work that afternoon my leg just gave way from under me and I couldn’t walk.
“I was sweating and in a lot of pain but after a desperate call to my midwife, she told me it was likely to be sciatica.”
Deauvanné spent a couple of agonising days immobile, before her GP sent her for a scan which came back negative. She received some physio for the supposed sciatica and tried to get back to work.

“Eventually after more dismissive chats with my midwife, a chaotic ‘babymoon’ spent in pain and a thigh that had swollen up like a balloon, I insisted on going to the hospital.