Made In Chelsea’s Louise: Childbirth trauma that left me longing to end it all
After a miscarriage, emergency caesarean, near-fatal blood loss and a bout of PTSD...
SHE made her name on the reality TV show about the glamorous lives and loves of wealthy youngsters from some of London’s most exclusive postcodes.
But Made In Chelsea’s Louise Thompson today reveals her own reality over the past four years has been a shocking catalogue of trauma that left her wishing she was dead.
‘Childbirth destroyed everything that was good in my life,’ she says in an exclusive extract from her new memoir Lucky: Learning To Live Again, published in The Mail on Sunday’s You magazine.
The fitness influencer has had three haemorrhages involving the loss of an astonishing 21 pints of blood, suffered a split womb and had her colon removed. She was also hit with pneumonia and sepsis, and developed bedsores.
In an accompanying interview, she says her nightmare began with a miscarriage at the end of 2020. The following year she became pregnant again with Leo, her son with her fitness company owner fiance Ryan Libbey.
Because she is so petite – she’s only 5ft and describes her body as being like that of a 14-year-old boy – she was sure she would struggle with a normal delivery. But Louise said her midwife would not countenance her having a caesarean, and even suggested a home birth. The star says she felt as if she was being labelled ‘annoying’ and ‘too posh to push’ – but she was proved right in the most horrific way.
She had to undergo an emergency caesarean when her baby’s head became stuck in her pelvis, and suffered the first of her nearfatal haemorrhages.
‘I heard a cry as Leo came out, but I didn’t care that I had a child,’ the 34-year-old says. ‘I genuinely believed every second I was bleeding to death. I kept turning to Ryan and asking him if I was still alive.’
Another haemorrhage followed a few days after she was discharged, and, in the aftermath, Louise was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. She struggled to even look at her newborn son, let alone bond with him, and begged Libbey for ‘a pill to end it all’.
‘I didn’t care if I died,’ she says. ‘I just wanted someone else to kill me because I didn’t have the confidence to do it myself.’
Louise was also suffering from the chronic bowel disease ulcerative colitis. In January this year, after months of crippling pain and ‘18 to 20 trips to the loo’ a day, she had her colon removed. ‘My body just gave out. I was begging [doctors] to take it out,’ she says.
She now has a stoma bag, which she will live with for the rest of her life, and health charity campaigners applauded her for going public to her 1.4 million Instagram followers. During her darkest moments, Louise says her relationship with baby Leo suffered, but now he is two their bond had blossomed. ‘Everything’s taught me to slow down and consciously connect with him,’ she says.
Louise called her book Lucky after a taxi driver commented how fortunate she was to be alive.
‘That completely shifted my perspective,’ she says.