Tears of Joy ‘I HAD TO FIGHT FOR MY BABY’

Joy Reid has always been one to live up to her name, but the perennially upbeat journalist is the first to admit the past few months have been extremely tough. It’s only now, with four-month-old baby Annabelle in her front-pack as she jiggles her to sleep at her Christchurch home, that the mum-of-three finally feels she’s “coming up for air”.

Today, while her older children Jonny, seven, and Stella, five, are at school, Joy and her baby can finally enjoy the precious one-on-one bonding time that Annabelle’s health issues robbed them of in the days following her birth.

Jonny had a traumatic birth too and Joy’s husband Geoffrey had been gravely ill for four months following Stella’s arrival. Surely she’d catch a break third time around, thought Joy.

“I had dreams of newborn cuddles on the couch allformer European correspondent. “And it didn’t end up to be what I expected.”