Nadia Sawalha has been praised for her honesty when it comes to speaking about her home life, but there is one topic that the Loose Women panellist finds difficult to discuss - the birth of her two daughters Maddie, 17, and Kiki-Bee, 12. She relived the terrifying ordeal again for fans on a recent YouTube video with her husband Mark Adderley.
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Sharing new details of her "very difficult" first birth with Maddie - who was born on Christmas Day - Mark explained: "When she landed on the floor there was a beat when neither of us knew if she was alive."
Nadia and Mark got emotional as they relived the terrifying birth of their eldest daughter
Nadia chose to give birth at home surrounded by her husband, sister Dina and a midwife, but the experience was a lot more frightening than she had expected. "If I had gone into hospital with this birth, I would have had a cesarean and I did not want that," Nadia said. Recalling the day it began in December 2002, she said: "On 23rd at about 11 o'clock in the morning I just got this feeling. It wasn't my water breaking, it was a contraction. Fairly soon it got very, very painful and I was frightened."
The mother-of-two said that the initial fear was detrimental to the following 36 hours of labour, stating: "I went to a place of 'no' rather than 'yes', so every time I had a contraction I was screaming 'no' and pulling myself in...Every time I got into the birthing pool I felt like I was being electrocuted."
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"My first memory of all of it was a lack of control," Mark added. "The midwife said to me you need to get your wife to a hospital. A medical expert is telling me one thing and your sister is telling me another. I almost blackout from it." Despite the very scary experience, their eldest daughter was a healthy and happy baby and they went on to try for a second child.
In the video, Nadia got choked up as she spoke candidly about the moment she was told by doctors that her pregnancy with Kiki-Bea was all going according to plan, after already suffering three miscarriages. Mark said back in January: "Ironically, Kiki's birth was one of the most heartwarmingly complete sharing experiences I have had in my life, that we couldn’t have had in hospital."
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