Amanda Holden spoke through tears as she described the moment she found out her son Theo was stillborn and praised the NHS staff who supported her at the time.
“I just remember hearing this woman just screaming and screaming and then it was actually — it was me, I realised it was me that was screaming,” Holden says in an interview that will air tonight [24 May] as part of ITV’s ‘The NHS Saved My Life’, which marks 70 years of the National Health Service.
Holden, who is mum to Lexi, 12, and Hollie, six, with her husband Chris Hughes, had a stillbirth at seven months pregnant, just a year after she had suffered a miscarriage.
Holden called it the “most surreal, out-of-body experience” and said she was told she was calling out her eldest daughter’s name, because she didn’t know how she would tell her.
Speaking about her stillborn son - who she named Theo - she said on the show: “He looked so normal and so peaceful and I was still his mummy. So I held him in my arms and said goodbye.
“I couldn’t have done it without the incredible team around us. My husband was so strong and so amazing, but they got him through it too and then, the days and months afterwards, the same team of people checked on us every single day.”
Holden said she doesn’t believe she got special treatment with her aftercare because she was famous, adding: “I believe they would have extended that care to any woman and family in that situation.”
The mum-of-two added that she would “literally do anything” for the NHS because they got her through it.
In May 2012, the ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ presenter spoke about the traumatic birth of her second child Hollie, who she became pregnant with shortly after her stillbirth. Speaking on ‘This Morning’ at the time, Holden said she wasn’t going to have any more children, as her heart had stopped during childbirth and she lost 15 litres of blood.
“There was a lot of blood and it wouldn’t clot... but [the doctors] did say to me that if anything goes wrong they will put me under a general anaesthetic,” she said. “Then they said to me ‘You’re bleeding very heavily, we’re going to put you under a general anaesthetic’ and I said ‘okay’ because I had seen Hollie and cried with joy.”
‘The NHS Saved My Life’ is on ITV at 7.30pm Thursday 24 May.