Savannah Miller: “Being Pregnant At 47 Is The Most Surprising Twist Of My Life”

Here, she reflects on the unexpected joys of a midlife pregnancy. Photographs by Siân Davey. Styling by Charlotte Rutter

My life has taken a lot of turns over the years – working for Alexander McQueen in the noughties; debuting Twenty8Twelve with my sister Sienna at London Fashion Week; wearing my own bridal line to the Met Gala – but being pregnant at 47 is still the most surprising twist by far. It is not lost on me how lucky I am to have three children already – 21-year-old Moses, 18-year-old Lyra and 14-year-old Bali – but this last year has still been a learning curve. The whole experience of having a baby in your 40s is fundamentally different, in both the most superficial and the most profound ways.

I’m only due in late August, but I’ve felt nine months pregnant since spring. This time around, I grew much bigger earlier. Wardrobe-wise I barely made any concessions during my earlier pregnancies: my stomach muscles hid my bump until the sixth month each time. Now I’m attached to maternity jeans with elasticated waists, which are perfect for wearing during my non-negotiable, twice-daily naps. Even Sienna gave in to stretch fabrics while carrying her third this year. As my very stylish 14-year-old niece Marlowe said to us both recently, “Guys, I just cannot with these clothes.” She had a point. Honestly, I thought I’d left the trimester-counting, nursery-decorating stage of my life behind more than a decade ago, and for a long time, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go back to the beginning again – especially while dealing with the brain fog and identity shifts and all the rest that comes with perimenopause. Could I really cope with the newborn exhaustion again? What about potty training? And nursery viruses? (Dear God, the nursery viruses.

For 10 consecutive years from my mid-20s to mid-30s, I was either pregnant or breastfeeding – a magical period, in hindsight, but an exhausting one. I met my first husband so young, right in the middle of a Central Saint Martins degree, and found out I was pregnant with Moses the day of my 2004 graduation. Thankfully, at 26, I had the stamina to power through any nausea or tiredness while dreaming up Twenty8Twelve at my kitchen table, covering moodboards with all manner of inspiration, from Dickensian London to wardrobe references from On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I managed a good 18 months with Moses before things really started to pick up pace. Once the label was powering forward and Lyra was on the way – I was 28 – I felt as though I was on a (very fun) runaway train.

This was the #girlboss era and when Lyra arrived, after six weeks of maternity leave, I just strapped her to my chest and got back to work – regretfully as I feel that I really missed out on soaking up that sacred baby time and doing night feeds while emailing Sienna military-jacket references was, in retrospect, probably not best practice. I was young and hungry for success. I loved my work but it was hard to have the perspective, which comes with maturity, to really cherish what matters more than anything else.

By the time I was pregnant with Bali at 32, things were taking a different direction for us. Sienna’s acting career was really taking off and the juggle of having three kids under six at home – one of whom really didn’t sleep – was just too much to manage. It sucked the fun out of it. Taking a step back from work to have a year out in Panama was a wild solution to the problem but it revealed depths of resilience I didn’t know I had.

When my husband and I separated just before my 40th birthday in 2018, I’d already started to feel that I needed to be taking on less – far less. I’d always carried the domestic load in our home on top of my career: mentally keeping tabs on how many cotton buds were left in the bathroom cabinet and which school kit was needed for the next day, being the tooth-brushing monitor one minute and the tooth fairy the next. With my youngest out of the early years phase, I could see a light at the end of the tunnel and I began to dream about what I’d do with my freedom.

Until I turned up at my friend Sarah’s house for a party in the summer of 2019 and found her brother Jim standing in her Cotswolds garden – I kid you not – under a rainbow. We’d heard about each other’s divorces from Sarah, but I’d only been separated for six months at that point and the thought of meeting somebody else was yet to enter my mind. Nobody was more shocked than me when the two of us got stuck in to the rosé and the rest of the world melted away as we got completely wrapped up in each other’s conversation. When he kissed me goodnight, I literally sprinted away across the lawn, Cinderella-style, stunned by what had just happened. (It’s only later that he admitted he’d had his sights set on me since glimpsing me and my sister dancing at a festival 22 years ago.) He saw my name on the party WhatsApp group and, despite having a load of friends staying that weekend, he raced down from Wyresdale Park, his family estate in Lancashire, where we now run a beautiful wedding venue together. And all along I thought it was me who had been the one enraptured!