Exclusive:
Paloma Faith believes a simple pin-prick test could save thousands of mothers from a debilitating side effect of motherhood. So why aren’t doctors taking it seriously?
Paloma Faith is nothing but refreshingly honest when it comes to the taboo difficulties of motherhood.
And today she’s got a new mission: she wants to raise awareness of one of the most common, but oft-dismissed, side effects of giving birth: the changing hormones.
For decades hormone issues with expecting and new mums have ben dismissed as normal – and even made the butt of many a joke. But Paloma, 43, believes many women and doctors are not paying enough attention to just how much they can overtake your life.
So she’s now calling for a new pin-prick test to help new mothers keep track of what’s going on in their bodies each day – and she’s confident it could save many a relationship.
Paloma explains: “[I] was in sort of a fog of because your hormones are so erratic and you don’t realise as a woman how in charge they are, until you have none. Like you sort of just think, ‘Oh, that’s who I am’. But then when they just disappear, and you’re numb or depressed you just completely disappear [as well]. They just go switch-a-rooney, and then you’re like [a] void.”
Indeed, after having two daughters, Paloma, 43, felt like she lost herself entirely in a fog of exhaustion and emotion.
Amid the sleepless nights and her fluctuating hormone levels, she feared the person she was before motherhood had disappeared. Instead, she was gripped by feelings of a total loss of control that took over her mind and body without warning.
Now, she is calling for doctors to pay more attention to post-natal hormone levels, insisting: “If science was run by women, there would be so much more done for it.”
She believes a simple daily hormone test could save relationships and prevent countless divorces.
She added: ‘Why haven’t they invented like a little pinprick test every morning to check what your hormone levels are? So, you can add a bit of something if you need it? Because, like, how many divorces would not happen?
“If we just were able to go, like a diabetes thing, just like, little bit of blood on the thing, ‘Oh, it says you need a bit of this’. And it would just work, we’d be level. We’d all be getting on.”
Paloma split from her long term partner Leyman Lahcine in 2022 after nine years together. And she has frequently talked about the immense strain parenthood put on them.
“When I met the father of my kids, I genuinely did think that that would be my forever person,” she admits in a new interview with Jamie Laing and Sophie Haboo’s Newlyweds podcast . “I never thought at any point that we would break up.”
These days they are forging ahead as co-parents. They have two daughters aged eight and three, whose names they choose not to reveal. Paloma has openly talked about needing six rounds of IVF with her second child. Paloma and her ex are still close friends and still spend time as a family unit.
“The thought of not having my kids with me 50% of the time sounds like hell to me. I would just die inside. I can’t not have them,” she said.
So is love on the cards for Paloma in the future? While she’s previously ruled out marriage, she admits she’s had a change of heart, having been with her current partner for more than a year.
“I wasn’t married to my kids’ dad and I’ve always been someone that’s very anti-marriage, because the history of it is that it’s about ownership of women and I’m the child of a feminist,” she says.
“Weirdly, I don’t know what’s changed in me, but this guy gives me a bit like ‘Oh well.'”
She continued: “I’ll keep an open mind, I can feel myself softening. If I ever did, I would have a prenup. As soon as you have kids, you automatically love your children more than each other, and that is a given. It really is.”
The singer has launched her own podcast, Mad, Sad, and Bad, where she plans to interview other celebrities. So far, she has featured Alan Carr and Spice Girls Mel B on the show.
New episodes of Paloma’s Mad, Sad and Bad podcast are released on Tuesdays. Newlyweds with Jamie Laing and Sophie Haboo is released each Monday.
