Rochelle: Lay off mums who choose C-sections
Star hits out at ‘too posh to push’ jibes
ROCHELLE Humes has spoken out about claims that mums have caesareans because they are “too posh to push”.
The TV presenter, 32, had C-sections with her three kids and was hurt by suggestions that she had somehow failed.
Rochelle, mum to Alaia-Mai, eight, Valentina, four, and Blake, 13 months, with JLS star husband Marvin Humes, had not planned to have the operations.
She said: “I thought I was going to have a natural birth, I thought that was what I was supposed to do.
“It didn’t happen that way, but I was OK with that. What I wasn’t ready for was the negative connotations that come with having a C-section. I’ve been in situations before where people have said, ‘Oh, are you too posh to push?’
“I remember feeling really, really offended. Almost like I’d failed, like I couldn’t do it properly.”
GRUELLING
She told of the gruelling recovery from the operations and how Marvin, 36, had to help her wash.
Rochelle, who co-hosts TV music quiz The Hit List with Marvin, said: “There were a lot of things I didn’t know were going to happen.
“I didn’t know I was going to have a catheter. I knew I was going to have a sore tummy, but I didn’t know walking would be a big deal for the first time, and getting to the toilet.
“Marvin was really helping me and he was showering me, and I thought, ‘Our relationship’s taken a real turn here. I’m sure this is not what he signed up for’.
“He helped me get washed and I was thinking, ‘This really doesn’t sit right with me’.”
Speaking on her The My Little Coco Podcast with Kate Ferdinand, she said: “He was so good about it.
“He was like, ‘Rochelle, we’re married. This isn’t a thing, stop freaking out about it. I’ve forgotten about it already’. But for ages I kept
I felt really offended, almost like I’d failed, I couldn’t do it properly
thinking, ‘Oh my God, he’s seen me like this’.
“No one talks about the gruesome truth afterwards. You feel gross, you can’t wash yourself, it’s horrible.” The Saturdays star had planned to go without pain relief when she had Blake last year – but she ended up having another C-section.
She added: “I learnt the hard way. I put this weird pressure on myself, then it went the opposite way.”
She added: “I’m noticing online more people talking about the way they delivered and some saying, ‘I had a natural birth’, and someone else saying, ‘Well, you had a vaginal birth – what I did was still natural. I brought my baby into the world, it just didn’t go the way I thought.’”
Kate, 30, said she feared husband Rio, 43, would leave her after her C-section for son Cree, 10 months. She said: “I like Rio to see me in a nice way. I was wiped out, I couldn’t walk. It was just not a pretty sight and I saw him looking at me and I thought, ‘He’s going to divorce me!’”
mark.jefferies@mirror.co.uk
ON CLAIMS ABOUT C-SECTION