Beverley Turner, wife of ex-Olympic rower James Cracknell, has been talking about how her pregnancy coincided with the most tragic moment of James' life - when he was almost killed in a road traffic accident.

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Just 10 days after her husband had a near-fatal accident while cycling in America last year, Beverley discovered that she was pregnant with their third child. But then she wasn't able to share the news with James.

"Due to his inability to process even simple information, it would be several weeks before I could even tell James our happy news," Beverley writes in the Daily Telegraph.

“When I did [tell James about the pregnancy], he smiled wryly, ‘How long have I been out for? Is it mine?’ he said. Today, he doesn’t remember the occasion and it’s fair to say that this pregnancy was rendered largely irrelevant due to the daily hardships of managing someone with a brain injury,” admits Beverley.

"The scans were an emotional reminder that I was indeed growing another child who seemed to be doing fine despite a daily diet of adrenalin. And, in the fleeting moments when I did consider the fact that I was pregnant, I was consumed by guilt that I wasn’t eating, resting or exercising properly (and had possibly had one too many glasses of wine at the end of especially stressful days)."

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Thankfully, two weeks ago Beverley gave birth to a healthy daughter, Trixie - a sister to Clyde, 7, and Kiki, 2. Although James' short-term memory problems following the accident means that he can’t be left alone with children, the Cracknells are now looking positively to the future. “Our lovely community health visitor said that after all our bad luck, we deserved to win the lottery," says Beverley. "But I look at Trixie, with whom I’ve already been through so much, and think that we already have."

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