Baring her bump in a billowing green gown, Binky Felstead is thriving in her final trimester. The former Made In Chelsea star will soon give birth to her third child on the Lindo Wing at London’s St Mary’s Hospital, famous for its royal births.
She has already picked the date and doctor – Tom Setchell. His father, Sir Marcus Setchell, delivered Binky and her siblings, and he was also Queen Elizabeth II’s gynaecologist, delaying retirement to safely deliver her great-grandson, Prince George.
“That’s quite cool, isn’t it?” says Binky, 32, while sipping coffee at our west London cover shoot. “Tom has delivered both my children. I’m terrified of pain and like to be organised, so I’ve planned everything as much as I can. I’ve booked my induction like I did with the other two, and my husband Max has already secured his parking space. I feel safe and secure in what I’m doing and just pray it goes that way, although I saw a spiritualist who said he’ll come two weeks early!”
On Thursday, Binky’s part autobiographical, part self-help book, The Making Of You: A Guide To Finding Your Identity And Bossing Motherhood, was published, featuring support and advice from experts. She was once famed for her glamorous lifestyle full of friendship dramas and relationship struggles on E4’s Made In Chelsea, but left the show in 2017 to focus on her daughter India, now five.
She found strength and self-worth from being a single mother in ways she’d never experienced, following years of being bullied as a child and living through her parents’ difficult divorce.
“Motherhood was the making of me,” says Binky – now wed to entrepreneur Max Darnton, who she shares 20-month-old Wolfie with.
“Before I had my children I had no idea what I was doing with my life. I was having fun but I had no substance. I’ve gone from being a 20-something party girl, drinking until I fell over then waking up with anxiety attacks and getting cheated on, to a mum of nearly three.
“I get asked questions all the time about blended families, co-parenting and what I went through with my miscarriage. There’s no better way [to answer] than putting it all into a book.”
Binky, who suffered a heartbreaking miscarriage at 12 weeks prior to having Wolfie, discovered she was pregnant with her third child while honeymooning in the south of France weeks after her Corfu wedding last July. “We got pregnant as soon as we got to France,” she recalls. “My boobs are always the first sign. Max rushed out and got a pregnancy test and it came up with the French word for pregnant, ‘enceinte’. We were frantically Googling what it meant and burst out laughing and hugged.
“What’s different with this pregnancy is when I was pregnant with Wolfie, I was so anxious at every scan, as it happened just a month after I miscarried. I was constantly checking for blood on the tissue every time I went to the loo and couldn’t feel him kicking, but this one’s kicking all the time.”
There are other things to worry about, though. Doctors have diagnosed the star with a low-lying placenta, which means there’s a higher chance she could bleed during the later stages of pregnancy or birth. “If I start bleeding at all I have to go straight to the hospital to get a Caesarean,” she explains.
But for the most part, her pregnancy has been plain sailing, even if she’s still adjusting to the physical changes. “My bum is 10 times bigger as I can’t exercise much due to the placenta,” she sighs. “Luckily Max loves my big bottom!”
Self-confidence doesn’t come naturally for Binky. As a kid, she wore big round glasses and train-track braces, and suffered with acne so badly she kept concealer in her bra in case she brushed past someone who removed her make-up. She also recounts one group of teenagers who made posters of her face with “rat tail hair and chicken legs” and put them up around school.
She started counselling aged 16 and has never really stopped. “I used to cry every morning without fail in the school’s chapel,” she tells us. “I couldn’t sing the hymns because I was crying so much. Nobody spoke to me.”
That trauma hasn’t wholly left her. While heavily pregnant with Wolfie, she irrationally feared that Max, who she met at Soho Farmhouse in January 2019, wouldn’t find her attractive after going through photos on his iPad and comparing herself to “skinny” girls he used to hang around with.
She wrote, “It was naughty of me to look but once I started, I couldn’t stop, wracking my brain as to why this gorgeous guy was choosing a domestic life with a heifer like me – who came with a kid and baggage.”
Now she understands she was hormonal and fragile and sees an upside to her ordeal. “The bullying has made me such a strong person today,” she says. “Whenever I get s**t on Instagram, it doesn’t affect me. I remember going on This Morning when India was a newborn baby and getting so much abuse on Twitter about how I was holding her. It was really hurtful and unjustified. Ever since, I’ve blanked out the mummy police because there are so many. I just block and delete.”
Naturally, Binky worries about her children being subjected to the same vile abuse she was. “India is in Year One now and I’m always watching out for any bullying,” she says. “I’m a Tiger Mummy! Someone called her a loser last year and I was like, ‘Excuse me!’ to this little boy. I have to be careful I don’t get too involved.”
While parenting has enriched Binky’s life, doing it in the public eye hasn’t been easy. “After India was born it was really weird. I’d have four paps outside my house,” she says. “They followed us everywhere, which is scary enough when you’re putting a new baby in the car. They were going over red lights, almost running people over on the crossings. It got really nasty. Obviously, you kind of sign up to that when you join a TV show but it made me really nervous that I was going to crash, or what were they going to say if I got the baby out of the car seat the wrong way.”
Undoubtedly, her biggest challenge has been learning how to co-parent. She says handing India over for weekends was gut-wrenching and isn’t much easier today.
“Those days were hard – her leaving me and navigating my life without her,” she says. “India understands now, but when she was young it was heartbreaking as she didn’t know what was happening. I used to do small things, like draw a little heart on her hand, or when she got back home I’d make sure her room was exactly as she left it, like her dolls having a tea party, so it didn’t feel like she was coming back to a different environment. It’s so confusing for their little heads.
“I don’t know what I’d have done if Max hadn’t come into my life. I would have been a wreck. It makes me teary thinking about it.”
Max has been in India’s life since she was 18 months, and he sees her as his own. It’s why Binky doesn’t like the current buzzword “blended families” to describe her tribe. “I hate that term,” she admits. “We don’t feel like a blended family. We are just a family. India would never say ‘my half-brothers’. They are her brothers, that’s it. Max doesn’t think of her as a stepdaughter. He thinks of India as his own flesh and blood. She can’t remember life without him.”
Super-dad Max told Binky on their first date that she would be the mother of his children. “He’s a super hands-on dad,” says Binky. “He’s really busy, but when he’s at home he leaves his phone at the door and it stays there until the kids have gone to bed. He’s always present and helps with bath time, and he does the cooking.
“We do rock, paper, scissors for the pooey nappies. He normally loses, which is brilliant.”
Sex is an important part of their relationship, too. “Sex can be scary after having a baby,” she admits. “A glass of wine or two helps, especially if it’s the first time. If I put on something sexy, Max would burst out laughing, that’s just not very me. Kissing is important – after having sex you feel so much closer.”
The couple are preparing for their babymoon in Oman, but Binky is more excited about the chapter that comes next. She says, “It’s our first trip without the kids. But I just want the baby out now. I’m looking forward to getting into a little routine with the new one and watching them all play together. I’ve always wanted a big crazy family. I feel like I’m living my dream.”
The Making Of You by Binky Felstead is available on Piatkus Books now
