Obsessively, I googled miscarriage rates and read blogs written by women who’d lost their early pregnancies. I felt very fortunate not to have struggled, as so many people wanting babies feel the frustration and disappointment of seeing negative tests month after month, but something told me not to get too excited.

I appeared on The Jonathan Ross Show a few days after that and ALREADY people were noticing, so I had to delete comments and messages on my social media asking how far along I was. We wrapped filming on The Duchess on 4 December 2019 and I was pregnant the following week. Besides, I get pregnant the way Kim Kardashian gets pregnant – mostly in the face and boobs, so not easily hidden. In principle, it annoyed me that I had to film The Duchess before trying to get pregnant, as by now I was 36 – which I’m told is even more ‘geriatric’ than 35 – but it made sense. When I had been expecting Violet, I threw up multiple times a day in my first trimester and it wouldn’t be wise to have any distractions like that on set. After we were married, the donor sperm I had carefully selected were either chucked in the bin or returned to sender. I’d been investigating using a sperm donor, but then I was reunited with Bobby, my high-school boyfriend: I’d intended to have a one-night stand and accidentally married him instead. but I wish I’d had fewer children.’ Photograph: Carla Guler. I figured nobody comes to the end of their life and thinks, ‘Yeah. I’d known for a long time that I wanted to have more than one child and I was fine with the idea of doing it alone.

In this exclusive extract from her new book, The Audacity, Ryan opens up about motherhood and heartbreak. Comedian Katherine Ryan escaped an abusive relationship and found her voice as a stand-up.

The audacity katherine ryan