Sally Phillips has discussed raising her eldest son Olly who has Down’s syndrome and said life is ‘more meaningful and happy’ since the teenager’s birth.
Speaking to Giovanna Fletcher on the Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, the Smack The Pony actress, 51, discussed the moment she was told Olly, now 15, had Down’s Syndrome and how she has adapted to his needs.
Sally welcomed Olly with ex-husband Andrew Bermejo, with the former couple also parents to sons Luke, 11 and Tom, eight,
Family first: Sally Phillips has discussed raising her eldest son Olly who has Down’s syndrome (pictured with Olly in 2019)
The star said: ‘I got married at 31, my husband definitely wanted a year without children, which was probably very wise.
‘Then we got cracking straight away, so I had this sense that I needed to get on with it. It’s quite interesting because I had Olly, who has Down’s syndrome, he was my first child.
‘Then once I became a geriatric mother, my other two kids don’t have Down’s syndrome but I had my child with Down’s syndrome before I was a geriatric first time mum. ‘
Down’s syndrome is a genetic condition that typically causes some degree of learning disability and certain physical characteristics.
Candid: Speaking to Giovanna Fletcher on the Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, the Smack The Pony actress, 51, discussed the moment she was told Olly, now 15, had Down’s Syndrome and how she has adapted to his needs (pictured January 2020)
Screening tests can uncover Down’s syndrome during pregnancy but are not completely accurate.
It is caused by an extra chromosome in a baby’s cell due to a genetic change in the sperm or egg.
Discussing her pregnancy with Olly, she said: ‘I was pretty miserable pregnant, and I now realise I think my body was trying to get the right nutrients for Olly.
‘So at about five months I went to see a nutritionist naturopath who put me on some super strong vitamins and that gave me my brain back to some extent and I think made a huge difference to Olly.
‘I think we are only just starting to find out the impact you can have with nutritional treatments for babies with learning disabilities in the womb.
Children: Sally said she wanted Olly to have two siblings because she ‘didn’t want to leave one sibling as a carer’ and wanted the siblings to have each other to talk to (pictured with sons Olly Luke and Tom in 2018)
‘Olly didn’t turn, and that’s quite common with kids with Down’s syndrome because they’ve got poor tone. So I tried to turn him, have him turned, which was the single most painful thing and that didn’t work so I ended up with a caesarean
Olly wasn’t diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome until he was 10 days old, with the newborn not feeding and rapidly losing weight, dropping from 8lb to 3lb.
Sally said: ‘It was a really happy time, those 10 days, but quite worrying because he wasn’t feeding and he was losing weight.
Sally said she released the magnitude of Olly’s condition when she saw her brother’s newborn child next to her son.
She said: ‘My brother had his second child three months after I had Olly. So that Christmas, it was so upsetting because we had these two babies next to each other on the bed.
‘His baby could already do more at three weeks old than Olly could at three months. So in terms of lifting his head and things like that so I could see that there was a massive difference.
‘But my mother knew, she didn’t know he had Down’s syndrome but I remember my mother in the hospital saying “he’s not gripping”.’
When Olly was 10 days old, he was taken back to hospital due to his significant weight loss.
Beloved: Sally said although she was initially ‘devastated’, her and her family’s lives are more ‘meaningful’ for having Olly, and offered advice to parents of children with Down’s syndrome
She said: ‘They said, bring him back in. I said actually I’ve managed to get him to feed so I’d rather stay here. They said no bring him back in. So they already knew I think, the health visitors knew and they were cross with the doctors for not having spotted it.
‘In retrospect they’d asked for the doctors to come and see but August is a time when in NHS hospitals lots of new doctors start and I had had a bad C-section so they’d called for the paediatrician to come and have a look at Olly and she had refused.
‘She said “our worry is the mother, the baby is fine” and I guess they were just busy, you should never ever ignore a midwife I think.’
Speaking about the moment she was told Olly had Down’s Syndrome, she said: ‘ We got called back into A&E and the doctor said “I’m just going to run some tests for Down’s syndrome”. I said “what?” and he said “I’m sorry” and I just went into shock.
Close bond: Sally praised her son’s ‘jokes and humour’ as he adjusted to the challenges of lockdown (pictured in 2018)
‘The shock I went into was shaking and the actress part of me was like this is so interesting. I am flapping like I’m trying to do an impression of a goose trying to take off a lake, that’s so strange. Then they had to take blood from my baby.
Sally said although she was initially ‘devastated’, her and her family’s lives are more ‘meaningful’ for having Olly, and offered advice to parents of children with Down’s syndrome.
She said: ‘The way it tends to go is, that it is a tremendous shock, and you do feel devastated for a bit but everybody not only adjusts but quite often their lives are more meaningful and happier for having the person with Down’s syndrome in it.
‘Within a certain period, within a year. I think presenting it as a big tragedy stops parents bonding.
‘I think it’s just really important that it’s presented to parents as “listen you are going to feel really bad and really frightened for a bit but it’s vanishingly rare for people to not to be delighted with their new family member”.’
Sally said she wanted Olly to have two siblings because she ‘didn’t want to leave one sibling as a carer’ and wanted the siblings to have each other to talk to, as she opened up about enduring heartbreaking miscarriages.
She said: ‘I wanted them to have each other to talk about it if I’m not here or their dad wasn’t here. But I kept miscarrying, so I found it really really hard to have those babies.
‘But again, it’s made me very grateful. So I don’t mind that there’s chaos, I am just grateful that we have the family and we have the three.’
The Miranda actress said she talks about Olly’s Down’s Syndrome ‘all the time’ with her younger sons, saying: ‘I think that’s partly because we did the documentary. I mean I don’t know if I made the right decision or not.
‘It’s a difficult thing to know what the right thing to do is, I mean some families don’t talk about it (..) I remember saying to Luke “Olly is very special” and he said “Mum, am I special?” and I said “yes, yes you are special”.
‘I thought okay we will park that for now and we will do it another time. Then I went, “Olly has something called Down’s syndrome” and Luke says “do I have ups syndrome?”.
Mother and son: Open: The Miranda actress said she talks about Olly’s Down’s Syndrome ‘all the time’ with her younger sons (pictured 2017)
‘He just wouldn’t understand Olly as being in a different category to himself and I think I came to realise that he had the right view and I had the wrong one.’
Sally praised the writer of a letter sent to her when she had Olly, which ‘took her fear away’ as she revealed what she would pen to a mother of a baby with Down’s syndrome who didn’t know, or a woman trying to decide whether to keep a baby with the condition.
She said: ‘Somebody I didn’t know, she just told me about her daughter and it made all the difference in the world, it just took so much fear away.
‘She described her daughter at that age eight or nine, she just described her so beautifully, she just told us about her journey.
‘The idea that I wasn’t going to have this vegetable, I was going to have a child that had favourite TV shows and went to school.
‘So I would write a letter to somebody who’s just had the diagnosis saying diagnosis is the worst bit and here are some of the things. I would make it very specifically funny.
Sally praised her son’s ‘jokes and humour’ as he adjusted to the challenges of lockdown.
She said: ‘Olly hasn’t really understood lockdown, and he turned up at a neighbour’s house in his pants asking them to take the bunting down from outside our house because it irritated him and he knew I wouldn’t.
‘It’s embarrassing, but it’s also kind of funny. We have disco breakfasts, Olly loved Elton John. I would just write all these things down, his favourite food and what he cooks. Olly’s jokes, and Olly’s sense of humour.
‘[It would be a] letter to take away fear. I would write a letter to someone to say don’t panic, hold on tight, the grieving bit is awful but I promise you come out of it and 99.8 per cent of people who come out the other side are delighted with their family member with Down’s syndrome and they wouldn’t change them for the world.
‘It’s obviously every woman’s choice, and I don’t think you should force people to have babies they don’t want.
‘It takes a courageous person to choose it and now you’re going to be required to choose it so I didn’t know I was having Olly.
‘Most of my cohort didn’t know they were having (a baby with Down’s syndrome) they may have done the test but the test wasn’t accurate.
‘Now every pregnant woman is going to be required to become a bioethicist. You are going to be given all these choices, you can sequence the unborn baby’s g-nome from the tests we currently do.
‘There is all kind of choices on the horizon, and the reality is there are very few people who I think are going to choose, to have a child with a disability.
‘So, our community is very possibly going to disappear. There’s a wonderful culture that comes with people with Down’s syndrome, which you can see, like we see Andrew on The Greatest Dancer, or Sarah Gordy acting in The A-Word or even the Wouldn’t Change a Thing campaign.
‘There’s a load of positives with having Down’s syndrome and a load of wisdoms about being a human being and a load of huge bonds and blessing for families.’
Father: Sally welcomed her sons with now ex husband Andrew Bermejo (pictured with Sally in 2002)