This might make me unpopular but I do not rate Rosie Jones as a comedian. Personal preference, not intended to sway anyone, I just don’t.

When my favourite Sunday night viewing Call the Midwife returned with the New Year and I saw that Rosie Jones was the guest star in the first episode, I was a little rattled.

Not because I anticipated Rosie doing a comedic turn in a 1950s drama (I think both Rosie & I are well aware where we would be spending our days in this period and it absolutely wouldn’t have been an antenatal clinic – can anyone say institution? Shudder.)

But because Rosie has ataxic cerebral palsy, one of several kinds and her character, Doreen was billed simply as a mother with cerebral palsy. I greatly appreciate Rose’s profile in the mainstream media as a woman who doesn’t shy away from life with CP but I know our struggles are very different seeing as I have spastic diplegia CP and I really, really struggle with one, perhaps two people being apparently representative of me and all others with CP without this fact being taken into consideration.

I also feared that given the time frame of CTM that Doreen may end up being a victim (again, can anyone say institution?) and not someone shown with the autonomy to choose motherhood as I did. Here we go, I thought. Same old.

Well…

As a dramatic actress, Rosie as Doreen blew me away.

She had me as soon as Doreen met with the father of her baby to announce her pregnancy. An able bodied lad who loved her, simply because he did. Not just “someone like her” but someone who just saw her for herself, who wanted to marry her and raise their baby together. I was already sneaking looks at my own darling Kev, trying not to cry at the similarities.

Then when Doreen went for her first antenatal appointment, her fiance at her side and announced: “I’m going to walk”, hauling herself from her wheelchair. I nodded along empathetically, remembering just how painful it was to mobilise when so heavily pregnant. What a hero.

Then they examined her and began speaking about the delivery and Doreen suddenly said:

“I have to get it right. I am the way I am because of oxygen deprivation at birth. I have to get it right.”

Tears were streaming silently down my face as I nodded desperately along. This was exactly how I had felt when faced with delivering both my girls. At least I’d had the option to insist on a c-section.

Doreen’s six urgent words “I have to get it right” cut into my heart, ringing so painfully true. They have blanketed every feeling and motivation I’ve ever had about being a mum and parenting.

When Doreen gave birth to her baby boy, I was rooted to my seat in absolute awe. I looked at her legs held awkwardly up in stirrups, wondering how rigid and painful they must have been, or beset by spasms. How had she managed to do that? Could I have done that? Should I have done that?

“I did it.” Doreen announces breathlessly as she meets her son. “I got it right.”

I was broken. No-one could have understood and felt those words deeper than me.

Rosie Jones, I absolutely bow to your performance. Doreen got into my heart, jangling pieces that have hung there a little broken since I was the disabled expectant mother, wanting only to bring healthy babies into the world, not knowing if this body of mine would or even could deliver in the way nature says it should.

I’ll never know now. My daughters are here, I will not have more. I bought them both into the world via c-section because 9 months of pregnancy was so, so much toil on my body, my muscles, my bones.

I got it right too. For me.