Gabby Logan feared she was dying
Sports presenter Gabby Logan has revealed how she feared she was dying after the birth of her twins. She lost 40 per cent of her blood, and had to be rushed into emergency surgery as her horrified rugby star husband Kenny and other members of her family looked on. In the end, her life was saved by a blood transfusion.
The crisis happened when twins Reuben and Lois had to be induced in the NHS maternity unit at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in West London. They were delivered safely - but soon after Gabby, 31, began bleeding heavily. "The placentas came out and then the real drama started," Gabby said, speaking for the first time since the birth five weeks ago. "I was bleeding and it wasn't stopping." She was rushed into theatre.
"As I was wheeled along the corridor I asked the midwife if I was going to die. She said I wasn't, and I believed her." Gabby's father, former soccer star Terry Yorath, her mother Christine and brother Jordan looked on in horror from a nearby waiting room as Gabby was wheeled by leaving a bloody trail. Later Kenny told her that the delivery room had been left looking like a butcher's, she added. Surgeons gave her seven pints of blood to save her. The haemorrhage had been caused because her uterus failed to contract once the twins, weighing 12lbs between them, had been delivered.
But, she said, she still believes it was a "miracle" she was able to give birth naturally. She had been determined to avoid a Caesarean. She described her "best efforts" to bring on labour - she tried sex, acupuncture, reflexology and champagne, in that order - but nothing worked. Once her doctor decided to induce the birth and her contractions started they went on all through the night - with Kenny keeping Gabby's spirits up by inventing stories to get her through the pain. Her husband told her to imagine she was cycling up hills or running marathons. The couple played their favourite tunes on an iPod, and filled the room with the fragrance of roses from an aromatherapy oil-burner.Gabby also tried to relieve her pain with meditation and walking techniques she had read about.
When medical staff finally told her she could start to push, she said, it was as joyous a moment as when she had been told she was pregnant in the first place. In all she was in labour for nearly 24 hours, and then the twins arrived 16 minutes apart, Reuben first. Even after the life-threatening drama that followed, as she was being taken into the recovery room she told Kenny that she would do it all again. After five days in hospital she was ready to go home. But like lots of mums, Gabby says her post-natal hormones were going haywire, and she became weepy. She said she would cry every five minutes ... when Kenny told her he loved her, while watching the news, even when she walked out of the hospital and saw the baby seats in the car.
Gabby has vowed to be back at work on ITV next week - even though she's exhausted as the new mother of twins. The first feed of the day is at 7am, followed by seven more in the next 24 hours. There's not much time left for anything else - but she does have the luxury of help from domestic staff including a cleaner, a maternity nurse and even a personal breast-feeding counsellor. The last five weeks, she said, have been her "babymoon" - motherhood's equivalent of a honeymoon.
"It has been a magical time ... I want to be the best mum in the world, but that doesn't mean the fire in my belly for my other passions has gone. Suddenly my life has more purpose." Her inspiration to keep going, she added, is yachts-woman Ellen MacArthur. When Gabby feels tired, she imagines herself adrift on the ocean with a broken mast and only packet soup to eat, and suddenly she feels stronger.