At 21 stone and 5ft4, Ange knows all too well the judgment that comes with being plus-size – but the scrutiny she faced stepped up during her pregnancies.
She gave birth to a daughter in 2016 and earlier this year, surprisingly discovered she was pregnant with triplets at the age of 38. But concerned about her health, she claims doctors offered to terminate one or two of the babies, which left the mum appalled.
“I’ve always been a bigger person,” she said. “Even though I’m healthy and go to the gym regularly, there’s always judgment.” When she first fell pregnant at the age of 31 in 2015 with her daughter Dottie, Ange, from Somerset, didn’t know her weight but was a dress size 24.
“Doctors were horribly blunt with me. They said, ‘you should not be having this child.’
“They kept talking about the risks of diabetes, high blood pressure and pre-eclampsia, all because of my size. There was such a focus on the BMI scale. It was awful.”
But Ange had a textbook pregnancy. She didn’t develop any of the conditions she’d been warned about, and Dottie was born healthy in February 2016.
Ange loved being a mum and enjoyed seeing her husband Chris, 33, become a dad.
The couple knew they wanted to have another child, so began trying again in 2019.
“But this time nothing happened,” Ange, a creative director, adds.
With every month that passed, the disappointment grew – for the whole family.
“Dottie kept asking when she would become a big sister. Every month she’d wish on the moon for a sibling and my heart broke. I wanted nothing more than to make her wish come true,” Ange continues.
After two years of raised hopes and crushing disappointment, Ange knew something had to change.
They decided to stop trying and focus on Dottie instead.
She remembers the relief she felt to ‘give up’ and how it allowed her the space to truly relax and enjoy their amazing family-of-three.
But fate had another plan in store.
