Kelly Brook: 'I couldn't name the baby I lost'
Model Kelly Brooks talks about the pain of losing a baby at 6 months pregnant - and reveals that a miscarriage only months later led to her break up with Thom Evans
Kelly Brook has revealed she didn’t name the baby she lost in April 2011. She says it was her way of coping with the tragedy. The 34-year-old model was 6 months pregnant when she went into labour.
Once you're 24 weeks pregnant, if you lose your baby, it's officially counted as stillbirth, rather than a miscarriage. But Kelly, who was on the cusp of the 24-week-mark felt very strongly that she'd miscarried, rather than had a stillborn baby.
Kelly's ordeal began when she went with Thom Evans, her former partner – and the baby's dad-to-be – to visit his brother in Scotland. She woke the next morning with blood all over the bed. After visiting 2 nearby hospitals, she returned to London and went straight to bed. Just an hour later, she woke to find her waters had broken. Late in the afternoon on 6 May, after another hospital visit, her baby girl was pronounced dead.
"Because I was around the 6-month-mark, everyone was torn between whether this should be seen as a miscarriage or a stillbirth," Kelly says in her autobiography, extracts of which have been printed in The Sun. "In my mind, it was a miscarriage. That was how I was going to deal with it.
"But the hospital were insisting otherwise. They kept on asking me for a name. Thom and I had yet to even discuss this. I must give them a name, they said. Thankfully, my mum was there to give me support. We both said ‘No Name’".
Kelly, who’s now engaged to David McIntosh, also refused the hospital’s offer to have the baby's foot and handprints made. "Looking back," she says, "I was trying to detach myself – with love – for my own sanity.
"It was the most painful thing. I was bedridden for 2 days with enormous boobs, covered in cabbage leaves...Thom and I spent a lot of time crying that week."
Even more sadly, Kelly reveals, she had another miscarriage later than same year – although this time it didn't happen so far along in the pregnancy.
"Thom and I weren't careful and just before Christmas 2011, I got pregnant again," she said. "I had another miscarriage after a few weeks."
The couple kept the 2nd miscarriage a secret and Kelly attributes the breakdown of their relationship, shortly afterwards, to the pain of having to deal with both losses. coming so close together.
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