Louise Thompson has said she will never be mentally strong enough to carry another child after the traumatic experience of giving birth to her son Leo, and its harrowing aftermath.
The Made in Chelsea star, 34, was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after a series of difficulties with the hospital where she had her natal care led to an emergency caesarean in 2021.
Thompson says she wasn’t put to sleep with anaesthetic while being treated at the hospital and can remember watching herself “almost bleed to death”.
Speaking on Lorraine on Tuesday (21 May), the reality star said she only feels 95 per cent back to her usual self two years on from giving birth to her son.
“I have Asherman’s syndrome where my uterus is glued together. I had a year with no periods. I had surgery to fix that and then I had another haemorrhage.
“Doctors said ‘we do not want to risk doing more surgery in that area, we want you to live,’” she explained.
“I genuinely feel lucky to come out the other side.”
Thompson detailed how she’d lost “12 litres of blood” over a “couple of years”, adding she had been the “poster girl of health” before giving birth led to endless life-altering health complications.
“I want to encourage people to talk more openly about this sort of thing,” she said.
“I was witnessing myself bleed to death. I wish I was put asleep. It was one of the things I questioned in my birth debrief to try and get some answers… that was very difficult.”
The experience left Thompson with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a condition which affects 1 in 20 mothers after giving birth.
It comes after a parliamentary inquiry into birth trauma called for a national plan to improve maternity care this month.
According to The Times, the report found “poor care is all frequently tolerated as normal, and women are treated as an inconvenience”.
Among the recommendations included in the report is the creation of a maternity commissioner reporting to the Prime Minister.
Research from the Birth Trauma Association charity shows that about 4-5 per cent of women experience PTSD after birth – about 25,000-30,000 a year in the UK.
Thompson’s childbirth experience led to haemorrhages, the removal of her colon, fitting of a stoma bag and a series of newly diagnosed physical and mental health conditions.
“I could literally feel the doctors up under my lungs. Leo had to be pushed back up so that they could lift him out,” she told The Times.
The end was not in sight, as her son who she shares with fiancé and former co-star Ryan Libbey, stopped breathing during the procedure. He was resuscitated and taken into intensive care immediately after.
She then experienced a second haemorrhage while recovering in her home.
“I was in very bad pain. Then blood started pouring out of me like a hose. That [second] haemorrhage almost did take my life.”
The anti-depressants she took to control her thoughts of suicide, depression and dissociation triggered her pre-existing ulcerative colitis, which worsened until it was deemed untreatable. She was forced to have a procedure to remove part of her colon, leaving her with a stoma bag.
Thompson says she was left “begging for the stoma surgery” by the end of the experience as she was experiencing so much pain and losing blood through her anus on a regular basis.
“Which will almost certainly be permanent,” she said of the stoma bag, which she has since named “Winnie” after the famous cartoon bear.
“In a very short period of time I went from being somebody who was so fit that I was on the cover of a health magazine to a person with chronic health issues.”
