Warning: This article discussion of traumatic birth and PTSD which some readers may find distressing.
Made in Chelsea star Louise Thompson has opened up about being ‘close to death’ during her traumatic childbirth, saying she was literally watching herself lose blood.
The 34-year-old was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after she had to have an emergency caesarean in 2021 for her first child with partner Ryan Libbey.
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Louise was kept in hospital for a month after doctors saved her life, following serious complications during baby Leo's birth.
She later opened up with her fanbase to explain how she’d been battling not just PTSD, but also depression and anxiety, in the wake of her son’s arrival.
In a new interview on Elizabeth Day’s How to Fail podcast, the reality star bravely went into detail about her harrowing experience, recalling how there was one moment she found particularly ‘scary’.
"The moment where I felt the closest to death was following the haemorrhage, when I was witnessing myself … losing a lot of blood very quickly,” Louise explained.
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“So, I think I lost five and a half litres in a very short space of time… and then when I arrived at the hospital I was in a side room.
“And that was the scariest moment for me because then I was actually not with Ryan and not with anybody, because he wasn't allowed through the A&E doors.”
She added: “So I was on my own. It was the middle of the night. And I laid down, I was lying there and I felt completely paralyzed and I just thought, ‘this is it’.
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“And I really thought, ‘I cannot believe I've wasted so much of my life worrying about such ridiculous things’. Namely, work, money, doing up a stupid house that I spent so long building because I was never going to live in it!
“And I was never going to live in it with my family. And that made me really sad.”
Elizabeth asked her if, in the ‘midst of that horror’, she started ‘bleeding out’.
Louise said she could 'see the blood just flashing all over the sheet’, continuing: “And Ryan is next to me, so he's actually witnessing this all as well.
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“I genuinely was lying on this table, paralysed, watching all of this blood splatter against this sheet with blood all over the floor as well.
“I could feel shaky hands pressing down really high up against my ribs and there was just this complete state of panic in the room.
“And there wasn't once one person who looked at me and said, or touched my hand and went, ‘It's gonna be okay’. I didn't have that single friendly face.”
The mum-of-one said ‘one of the hardest parts’ of the traumatic experience was the ‘false finish’, admitting she heartbreakingly had to keep asking Ryan if she was even still alive.
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"I really thought that I couldn't stay alive for much longer,” she said.
“So I kept turning to Ryan every, it felt like 15 seconds… and I kept just saying, ‘am I alive’? Because I couldn't understand how I was alive.
“And I said, ‘I don't think I can keep going for much longer’. And I wouldn't have even had the capacity to make the decision myself.”
Ryan asked how much longer it was doing to take, and was told that medics would be ‘closing her back up now’ - only for them to realise they weren't able to.
“Then they discovered that there was a lot of blood so they couldn't, so I had that sort of false hope in my head,” Louise said.
She told Elizabeth that she hadn’t felt ‘comfortable enough’ to detail the birth until now, saying it’s taken a long term to ‘come to terms’ with what happened.
"For the first six months I had to just focus on living,” Louise said. “I really struggled. I had incredibly bad PTSD, anxiety, was living in perpetual fear, was petrified of most things in my house.
“Even just waking up I was petrified. And working through that was really tiring, very scary.
“I didn't have a lot of space for, for anybody else. I completely shut everything out.
"My priority was getting better, and then me and Leo kind of started connecting after that.”
She added: “I had so much noise in my brain, there was just a lot of like, horrible shouting, really scary thoughts.
“But right at the back, somewhere, there was this knowledge that I knew that he was my child, and that I knew that I needed to care about him. And that one day we would have a good relationship.”
If you've been affected by any of the issues in this story, you can speak in confidence about where to get help from Mind free on 0300 123 3393, 9am–6pm Monday to Friday, excluding Bank Holidays.
Topics: Mental Health, Made In Chelsea, Celebrity, Health
Jess Hardiman