Sam Quek has opened up about her traumatic second birth and how she and husband Tom Mairs swithered over names for their baby boy – who they eventually named Zac.
The 33-year-old Olympian and her property entrepreneur husband were already proud parents to their baby daughter Molly, who arrived in March 2021.
And then baby Zac arrived in March this year as the couple fell pregnant a second time a little sooner than either of them expected.
Sam – who is a champion field hockey player and now a TV presenter – was rushed to hospital a week before her due date with surgeons performing an emergency C-Section after she was bleeding uncontrollably.
Speaking about her new dynamic as a member of a family of four, Sam told OK!: “I think being a family of four, it’s pretty surreal, in my opinion.
“I’m loving every minute of it but it is a lot different to having the one baby and being a family of three. We’ve definitely got our hands full.”
Husband Tom agreed, adding: “In my head it wasn’t going to be much of a difference and it would be changing nappies again alongside Sam. But it is very different.”
Sam went into detail about her nerve wracking second birthing experience.
She explained: “Zac arrived a week early. I was presenting Morning Live on the Thursday and I was due to have my last show on Friday, the next morning. Everybody was saying ‘We’re looking forward to your last show, Sam. We’re going to miss you. But make sure tonight the baby doesn’t come, you wrap yourself in cotton wool because we need you to present tomorrow morning.’
“So I laughed it off and said; ‘Don’t worry I’m expecting him in a few more weeks. I think he will be late like Molly.’
“At two o’clock in the morning, I woke up and I felt a bit of a twinge. And I though I just needed to go to the loo. But those twinges got gradually stronger and stronger and turned into contractions.
“So I went in to Tom who is in the spare room because I usually get up at half three in the morning to get to Morning Live and I said ‘You’re going to have to phone up and say I’m not going to make it in because I cannot present in this sort of state!’
“We went in to the hospital because I had a C-Section. As soon as my contractions started, I had to let the midwife know. So we went in and the midwife said ‘you’re pretty far off’.”
Tom explained: “Yes the midwife said to me I could go home and look after Molly and they would monitor Sam for a bit. So I went home, got Molly and just went to bed. Everything was pretty good, I started my day at nine o’clock, rang Sam, everything was normal.”
Sam continued: “And then the consultant came in and said ‘I think we’re going to whisk you down for an emergency C-section’ because I’d been bleeding and they didn’t know where the blood was coming from.
“By the time two o’clock came, I was in the theatre, getting sliced open and Zac arrived.”
Although Molly also arrived via C-Section, Sam explained she was more nervous about being operated on the second time.
She said: “Having a C-section previously, you knew what to expect. The first time I had a C-Section with Molly I was probably a little out of it because of the pain relief.
“I couldn’t really remember much. But this time I was very switched on, very conscious. I was a lot more nervous. Really, really nervous. Just that whole thing of loosing feeling, and getting it back in your legs and obviously the baby. You were very, very relaxed because I was nervous, which is good.”
The couple then explained how they struggled to decide on Zac’s name.
Sam said: “With Molly, we did an app which was a bit like Tinder to find names we liked and what we matched. When we did it with Zac, we matched on a lot less.”
Tom explained: “Yeah it was a lot harder to get matches. One name we did consider that was a front runner for a while was Max. But the problem is we’ve got two dogs called Max and Olly. And so we thought, with Molly which is a hybrid of Max and Olly, the dogs were looking at us very confused. So we thought we couldn’t do that to them twice.
“We liked Zac, but we weren’t sure if it was Zechariah, or Zachary or how to spell Zac? Zac? Zach? Zak?”
Sam explained: “When we were in the hospital we hadn’t fully confirmed so he actually came out as ‘Baby Boy’ because he had no name.”
Tom added: “He’s actually not registered yet so he’s officially ‘Baby Boy Mairs’ because we were still a bit undecided. But now three weeks on he looks like a Zac.”
The couple then shared the moment that Molly met her little brother.
Sam recalled: “Molly was actually at my parents when she first met Zac. I walked in and I think I cried. Because I felt bad. She obviously had no idea what was going on, what we were going to be coming home with.
“She was waving and she was smiling and Tom came in with Zac in the chair. And she was brilliant, to be fair to her. She came right over and stroked him on the head and wen’t ‘Awwww’.
“Considering she’s so young, as well. She had just turned one but she knew what a baby was. Probably down to the many little dolls that she has at home. She was brilliant. And she still is.”
Tom shared: “It was a nice moment because I came in holding Zac but I made sure I had my mobile phone on record so we got to see her first reaction and when she’s older she’ll be able to see her first reaction.
“Her first reaction was that she was more excited by the car seat so she was just playing with the label or the handle and then she realised there was this little tiny baby inside.
“She had this moment where she put her hand towards his head and said ‘Awww.’ It was a nice moment.”
Sam and Tom went on to explained that they were surprised they managed to fall pregnant with Zac so fast after Molly arrived a year earlier.
Sam said: “When we were trying to conceive with Molly, we took about 18 months to get pregnant. So it was a long time. It was emotional and it was stressful. And then you start to question ‘is it going to happen’? And then when it did happen, I had the miscarriage.
“That was a whole different experience. Physically you go through so much, but also mentally. I’ve openly talked about it and I still will openly talk about it because I think the more you talk about it you realise how many other women are going through it.
“I know my friends and even family members have gone through that since. So the fact that we got pregnant again so quickly after Molly, I feel extremely lucky.”
Tom added: “It’s easy for me to get excited but the reality of it was that Sam was going to be pregnant for 18 months out of 21. It was going to be pretty tough.”
Explaining her surprise when she fell pregnant, Sam recalled: “It was almost a shock. I was back to physically feeling like myself again, feeling fit, busy with work.”
Tom recalled helping Sam keep her second pregnancy a secret while she was filming A Question Of Sport.
He said: “Sam’s career had just started to take up more. She was going to be presenting the Olympics, it had just been announced as the first female captain of A Question Of Sport, and we were working out what we were going to do with Molly and ensure that I looked after her on certain days when you were filming to give Sam the best chance and the best shot and give everything to these roles, your dream roles.
“I was going to A Question Of Sport with Sam for the majority of the filming because what was happening was that nobody was to know that we were pregnant, or Sam was pregnant, because of what had happened with the miscarriage, we were already guarded to tell people anyway, with Molly and with the second one.
“We didn’t want to tell anyone at least for three or four months.
“As we filmed A Question Of Sport we had this little signal for when she was going to be sick. So I’m in the audience and Sam’s just finished one episode and I’m like ‘Oh! Sam! Can I just have a word upstairs?’ And we would run upstairs and I’d hold her hair, turn the mic off, Sam would be sick, and then you’d come back down.
“They must’ve thought you had an upset stomach for like six weeks or something.”
Sam joked: “Or that we were up to something no good.”
Tom revealed: “We finally announced it on the last day of filming to the guys and they were excited.”
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