Louise Thompson has revealed how her struggles with severe Post-traumatic Stress Disorder after the birth of her son left her struggling to bond with her baby.
The former Made In Chelsea star, 35, almost died while giving birth to her son, Leo, four, in 2021 following an emergency caesarean.
After Leo’s birth, she went on to suffer with PTSD and post-natal anxiety due to her near-death experience and has since been diagnosed with Lupus, Asherman’s syndrome, suffered a second haemorrhage, and has also had a stoma bag fitted.
The former reality star has since become a campaigner for better maternity care in the UK, and in January launched a petition to call for the appointment of a maternity commissioner. This week Baroness Amos formally recommended the appointment in her report on maternity and neonatal services, a major milestone in the campaign.
Speaking about her own birth experience this week in light of the campaign update, Louise explained how she was left so traumatised that she could only spend five minutes a day with her son in the months after his birth.
‘I found it painful and difficult to engage with him in those early moments – he was associated with what had happened, which was hard for me to process,’ she told The Telegraph.
Louise Thompson has revealed how her struggles with severe Post-traumatic Stress Disorder after the birth of her son left her struggling to bond with her baby
The former Made In Chelsea star, 35, almost died while giving birth to her son, Leo, four, in 2021 following an emergency caesarean
‘His crying was incredibly triggering to me, which sent me into a dissociative state’, she added.
Louise says she was denied an elective C-section and recommended a home birth despite her concerns over her small frame and her baby’s size, as measured in the growth scans.
During labour, her son proved unable to fit through her pelvis, and she had to undergo an emergency C-section. An artery was nicked during the surgery and she had a haemorrhage, losing 75 per cent of her blood as doctors battled for four hours to save her life.
Then, just days after being sent home from the hospital with Leo she haemorrhaged again.
Over the course of several weeks in hospital Louise experienced more horrific haemorrhages as well as sepsis and pneumonia, with the physical and emotional toll leading her to miss precious bonding time with her son.
Once she was finally back home in the London house she shares with Leo and partner Ryan Libbey, Louise said ‘I sat in that garden for eight hours at a time during my recovery, in the middle of winter, wearing a massive coat, staring into space.’
‘I couldn’t be inside with anybody. Not even my child. I was really bad. I couldn’t think… That, for me, was what death looked like.’
Louise previously explained how she is ‘grieving’ the fact she’ll never carry another child after she and Ryan revealed their plans to expand their family earlier this year.
Louise was left so traumatised that she could only spend five minutes a day with her son in the months after his birth, explaining: ‘I found it painful and difficult to engage with him’
The couple are now embarking on a £50,000 IVF journey and plan to use a surrogate to add to their family.
In an Instagram update, Louise said: ‘Before I get into it, I want to say something that might sound a little contradictory: I am genuinely, wholeheartedly happy for every person who has announced a pregnancy on my feed lately – but at the same time, it has also been quietly eroding away at my heart.
‘This is not a pity piece or a cry for help; instead, it’s more of a public service announcement for anyone who has ever felt something complicated and tender while watching other people experience something they might never be able to experience for themselves.
‘You are not alone, and you are not a bad person for feeling two things at once. Joy and grief, love and longing, pride and pain…
‘These things are not really opposites; instead, they are neighbours, and sometimes they sit so closely together you can barely tell where one ends and the other begins.
‘And thank goodness for that. In the depths of my own birth trauma, I grieved A LOT, but I also clung to whatever slivers of joy I could find as well.
‘As long as I experienced 5% of ‘joy’ in one day, and 6% the next, I’d see that as a win. I used to tell people that even on the days when I felt completely hollowed out and disconnected from myself, if I could just make my dogs happy on a walk, then a tiny bit of their joy might find its way back to me.
Louise and her partner Ryan Libbey are now embarking on a £50,000 IVF journey and plan to use a surrogate to add to their family
‘The two can work in tandem. And that’s actually very helpful to know when you go through a tough time.’
Louise added that she previously took ‘being normal for granted’ as she revealed she ‘still feels a little broken’.
She continued: ‘So here’s where I currently sit on the spectrum of sadness: I don’t have a hospitable womb. I haven’t had a period in four years, not since I had my son. And for a long time, I moved forward with such determined speed that I didn’t stop to properly mourn what that actually meant.
‘Yes, I still have a uterus, but any blood that finds its way out of my lower half seems to exit through the back door. Sometimes I genuinely wonder whether someone connected the wrong vessels to the wrong organ when fixing up a major bleed. Is that even possible? I think I had some form of embolisation?
‘It’s crazy to me that I used to function like a totally normal human. Wow, I took that for granted. Currently, I still feel a little broken inside.’
Louise admitted that something has ‘shifted’ as friends start to welcome their second and third children as she continues to ‘grieve’ the loss of not experiencing being pregnant again.
She continued: ‘lately, something has shifted. Friends around me are having their second and third babies. Some even their fourth. And at the same time…almost as if a tap has been turned on… I’ve started remembering the good parts of my own pregnancy.
‘Now that those memories are surfacing, the grief is surfacing too. And with it, a very specific kind of loss I hadn’t let myself fully sit with before.
‘The things I will never have’.
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