Jamelia can't be apart from her daughter

29 October 2019

Jamelia won't be apart from her daughter after a "very traumatic pregnancy".

Jamelia

The 'Superstar' hitmaker - who also has Teja, 17 and Tiani, 12 - welcomed daughter True into the world last December but struggles to let her be with anyone else after the complicated birth saw True stop breathing for four minutes.

She said: "So I had a very traumatic pregnancy with True. My waters broke at 23 weeks and it was - As I said- I've had so much trauma in my life from childhood, not having a father around and so many different things happening and then being in a great relationship but then a kind of Motherhood trauma that I never experienced before. Motherhood was something I was always very confident about and then to have your waters break and totally out of control of whether this baby is going to survive ...

"I was hospitalised several times, I was on bed rest. Then when she was born, she stopped breathing for about 4 minutes. It was horrific, the worst thing that's happened to me ... The trauma of that day is still with me now. I can't send her to nursery, I can't be apart from her. I literally stayed awake for 4 weeks which you know started a whole other set of problems so there was a lot of issues around my pregnancy and again to even go through that and be so fiercely supported and looked after was strange to me."

And Jamelia struggled with post-natal depression, which left her feeling like her family didn't like her anymore and would be better off if she wasn't around.

Speaking to Giovanna Fletcher on her Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, she added: "During maternal mental health week I was doing these posts and researching maternal mental health and I realised that I was actually suffering with post-natal depression or postpartum depression and yeah I went to my GP and told her and she said 'yeah you know this is completely normal you know so many people are going through it ...

"I was literally looking at my family and being like, 'Oh they don't like me and they'll be much better off if I'm not here'. Literally watching them, 'Look at them they're laughing and they wouldn't be laughing if I was there' and I just didn't know what that was. Even now I don't know how to explain it."

You can download the Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast from acast.com.