‘The one thing I so dearly wanted couldn’t be planned’
Opening up for the first time about her not-always-easy path to motherhood, Jennifer Hawkins poses for an exclusive photo shoot as she and husband Jake Wall prepare for the birth of their first child.
Stellar
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Despite being heavily pregnant, Jennifer Hawkins didn’t mind getting up at 4am for her cover shoot with Stellar.
While slightly nervous because “it’s the first shoot I’ve done with a bump”, she also didn’t mind the glare of the rising sun, or the chill of the dawn — just as she didn’t mind three months of feeling nauseous all day.
In fact, she didn’t even mind when, weeks earlier, on her way to a chiropractor’s appointment, she was violently ill on her jacket... and all over her husband.
Because for the former Miss Universe turned national icon, feeling unwell has meant one thing: she’s still pregnant.
As she excitedly awaits the arrival of her baby daughter, Hawkins has agreed to an exclusive shoot with Stellar at Hayman Island, not just to mark the magazine’s third anniversary issue, but to celebrate her own milestone.
Because after a heartbreaking year that included a miscarriage, surgery and the discovery that she was suffering from severe endometriosis, Hawkins and her husband Jake Wall are just weeks away from welcoming their longed-for first child.
“I feel so excited and so grateful just to be pregnant and feeling the kicks,” she says.
“When we went to see the heartbeat scan for our little girl, it was the most incredible, overwhelming feeling because prior to that we were so scared.”
With her growing bump illuminated by the first rays of the day, Hawkins’s pregnancy seems as effortless as everything else in her picture-perfect life. But as she confides to Stellar, her journey to becoming a mum has been anything but easy.
“Last year was such a tough year for Jake and me. It was the toughest year of our lives,” she reveals.
“I felt like I almost broke and, in fact, it’s still really raw. But Jake was amazing. He let me sit with the pain, feel it and not be OK.”
Although she considered keeping her struggles to herself, it was hearing other couples’ stories that gave her hope all through those long months of disappointment and wondering.
And, having come through the other side, Hawkins can now see that the pain and loss has taught her something.
“I don’t take any of this for granted,” she says. “I had so many years of planning, but the one thing I so dearly wanted couldn’t be planned. Everything crumbled. With women, we want everything to be OK, but sometimes it’s just not.”
After marrying in 2013, Hawkins, now 35, and Wall, 36, never anticipated they’d have problems conceiving. Both were healthy and relatively young and Hawkins has five nieces and nephews from her three siblings.
But as the months passed and nothing happened, she started to worry. “As a woman and a type A personality, I’m used to planning everything,” she tells Stellar. “I think this will happen, then this will happen. It seemed like a lifetime as month after month people constantly asked us when we were going to have a baby.”
When she eventually fell pregnant, she and Wall were elated — but the joy was short-lived. They went for a scan to see their baby for the first time only to discover there was no heartbeat. The baby they had dreamed of more than anything was no longer alive.
“It was a difficult way to find out,” she says quietly, not wishing to go into details. Tests showed Hawkins could be suffering from endometriosis, a condition where the tissue that lines the uterus grows on other pelvic organs such as the ovaries.
While she hadn’t noticed the symptoms, looking back there were clues. When she came to after surgery, doctors told her she had stage 4 endometriosis, the worst stage of the condition.
FOR Hawkins, who became a household name after winning the Miss Universe title in 2004, last year was life-changing.
After a largely blessed career, which included a Myer ambassadorship, television hosting gigs, multiple advertising campaigns, the development of her own brands and the formation of a property development business with Wall, she found herself unable to grasp the one thing she truly wanted.
“It helps for people to talk about things that aren’t perfect because then there’s no stigma around it,” she says. “You can know what you want and have goals, but some will work and some won’t, and then you have to re-evaluate your whole life from scratch.”
Eventually she discovered she was expecting again, but she and Wall were understandably cautious. They only told family and close friends and, even when the 12-week mark came and went, Hawkins still wasn’t confident to share her news.
“I was just scared,” she recalls. “You worry and find yourself ticking off each week.”
With her bump well-advanced, Hawkins finally took to Instagram in May to reveal she was pregnant.
The couple found out the baby’s gender because, after everything they’d gone through, they wanted to connect with their daughter.
“Jake came in after the chromosome test and told me I could start buying pink,” says Hawkins, laughing. “We were completely overwhelmed because we thought it was going to be a boy.”
With the baby due this spring, the couple have bought a pram and the nursery is underway. But after years of mapping out their futures they’ve embraced living in the moment. Hawkins’s nausea has finally gone and the cravings for sourdough bread with honey have abated.
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“I was getting up at 3am and eating apples and oranges, but before that Jake would joke with me about how many loaves of sourdough I’d eaten each day.
“I thought pregnancy would be more glamorous,” she adds with a laugh. “I know these Stellar pics are very glam, and I did go into pregnancy thinking I’d wear this and do that, but I’ve been so sick. I had to eat to feel normal, and I’d throw up at night if I smelt cooking.”
She loved feeling her baby kick for the first time — “it was so magical, though I did look like an alien with a lump coming out of my stomach” — and thoughts of weight gain or stretch marks haven’t crossed her mind.
“People ask about work, social media, breastfeeding and I just don’t know,” she happily admits. “I just can’t predict and it’s good for me to let go for a little bit. I had a picture in my head of how many children I wanted by this age, but that’s gone out the door.
“Just to see a bump is like no other feeling when you’ve wanted it for so long. I don’t care if I put on weight or get stretch marks; the only thing I can think about is her being healthy.”
Of all the things she’s learnt over the past couple of years, chief among them is her appreciation and love for her husband. Surely being together for 16 years and married for six meant they were well equipped to weather any challenges?
“Oh, we’ve got history, it wasn’t perfect either,” she says. “But getting engaged and married and making that commitment has made us a team, and I’m super grateful to have him in my life.
“He’s the most amazing man and he was just so calm. I’m so grateful we found each other.”
Although they live a luxurious life, the couple want their daughter to experience the simple, loving upbringing they both enjoyed.
Hawkins remembers fondly the big family celebrations spent at the lake with her cousins and is keen to take their daughter camping as soon as she’s old enough.
“There’s a picture of me having a bath in a bucket when I was six months,” she says. “I want a bit of that rough-and-ready life for our daughter. All I want is for her to be kind and thoughtful. If she has the characteristics of her dad, I’d be happy with that.”
As for her working life, she has few plans. Like Elle Macpherson, who was also shot on location at Hayman Island three years ago for Stellar’s first issue, Hawkins has always had an entrepreneurial streak and loves designing and building homes with Wall under their J Group business.
The pair also launched a boutique drink, Sesión Premium Tequila, which recently won five medals at the SIP Awards in California.
“I love having an idea and starting a business,” she says. “I enjoy having a goal and learning off people, rather than being a one-man band. I dream about us working daily with our teams and then going home with our baby, but right now work is not my priority. I just want to be present and enjoy this new chapter.”
After a run of tumultuous years, which included the cancer diagnosis of Hawkins’s mother Gail in 2015 and the passing of Wall’s mother, they try to cherish the small things.
For Hawkins, that’s writing in the journal she’s keeping for her daughter, and listening to Bob Marley as she watches the sun go down.
“I can’t wait for us to become a family,” she says. “It’s going to change our lives forever. It’s the most exciting thing and we can’t wait to meet her.”