Countryfile host Helen Skelton is on cloud nine after welcoming her third baby, little girl Elsie, with her rugby player husband Richie Myler.
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The couple exclusively talked to HELLO! about their new arrival, who joins big brothers, Ernie, six, and Louis, four, and revealed all about their daughter's super speedy delivery.
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Sweet Elise was clearly in a hurry to join the family, as she made her entrance three days early on 28 December at 5.15am following a very quick two-hour labour after her waters broke. By 1pm she was already at home with her brothers!
Helen tells us how Richie, excited to meet his first daughter, had been on tenterhooks for about a month.
"All the way through November, he was convinced I’d have her early. Every time I called him, he would say: 'Are you in labour?'" says the TV star.
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Proud dad Richie with his new baby girl
As her due date drew nearer, there was concern their baby was measuring small – and Helen also contracted Covid a few days before Christmas.
She recalls: "It was weird as I'd hardly been anywhere, as we wanted to be able to have Christmas with family and because I was so heavily pregnant." Helen was then admitted to hospital on 27 December so she could be closely monitored.
"They had talked about inducing me a few weeks earlier, but I'd had Louis who was born early," she says. Louis was born on the kitchen floor at the family's French home when Richie was playing for the Catalan Dragons.
Helen and the beautiful Elsie
Helen adds: "So, I wanted to wait until she was ready. It did happen quickly though, and there was no time for an epidural or any drugs. My midwife Victoria and the whole team at LGI [Leeds General Infirmary] were amazing. You meet a midwife and after five minutes it feels like she is part of your family. I am in awe of them."
The host of Channel 5's This Week on the Farm also told us how it was about ten minutes before they checked to see that Elise was a girl, as they had previously found out her gender in pregnancy.
Of her birth weight, Helen reveals: "She was 7lb 8oz; Louis was just 5.6lb and Ernie was 7lb. I thought she’d be small, but she is my biggest bubba!"
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