Louise Thompson today spoke candidly about the serious health issues she’s had to contend with since giving birth to her now three-year-old son Leo, with the Made In Chelsea star admitting she feels ‘very lucky to be here’
Louise Thompson has opened up about the serious health issues she’s had to contend with since welcoming her son Leo-Hunter, revealing that she feels “lucky to be here”.
In an emotional interview on This Morning today, Louise spoke with hosts Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley about the “horrendous cascade of events” she’s had to deal with since becoming a mum. Louise shared: “I do feel very lucky to be here… I’d done the cover of Women’s Health twice, it was my bread and butter, I lived and breathed fitness”.
She added: “I gave birth to my son three and a half years ago and my world was literally turned upside down.”
The Made In Chelsea star nearly died giving birth to three-year-old Leo, whom she shares with partner Ryan Libbey, in November 2021. Announcing his birth five weeks later, she reflected that “to dance with death twice brings a whole new view of the world”.
In today’s interview, Louise, 35, spoke about the anxiety she’d experienced in the run-up to giving birth. Louise recalled: “Women know their bodies and we have this intuition and I really knew the childbirth thing wasn’t going to be a walk in the park for me… I kept trying to advocate for myself to speak up to say, ‘I really want to have a planned C-section’.”
“I just felt like I wasn’t listened to, and I had to jump through a lot of hoops, and there wasn’t a great level of continuity of care… I was just met with a lot of resistance, and then I kind of succumbed to my fate.”
Remembering how she endured three and a half hours of surgery whilst awake, Louise continued: “I just wished I had been put to sleep. Sadly, I’ve had to have subsequent emergency surgeries. It was only a week after I was discharged, after that surgery, without much explanation as to what had happened… Then I had a massive obstetric haemorrhage two days later.”
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Leo’s birth was sadly far from the end of Louise’s health nightmare. Following her ordeal, Louise was left with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which left her mind and body in “constant fight or flight mode”.
Looking back on this period during her This Morning appearance, Louise explained that writing her book Lucky had proven to be a “cathartic” experience as she worked to process everything she had been through. She told Ben and Cat: “There were times early on when I found myself, when I was finally discharged from the hospital after spending a large chunk of time there, where I couldn’t really function.”
She went on to admit: “I couldn’t connect with my son and I just didn’t recognise my life and writing [the book] for me was such a cathartic experience, it was the only way I could communicate with people.”
“It was awful that he [Leo] was really traumatising me… I just have memories of just holding him looking up as he was crying, I would just look up at the sky and honestly just pray, and I’d go, ‘Take all of this pain away, this mental and physical torture’.”
Explaining why she’d decide to name her book, ‘Lucky’, Louise shared: “There are definitely people who are less lucky than me and I do feel really privileged to come out the other side, I have my working brain again, I can think straight, I’ve got an amazing relationship with my son and so there are loads of hopeful messages in the book.”
“I’ve felt like I lost a lot of my old self, especially during those couple of years throughout the recovery, and I’ve gradually been piecing the jigsaw back together and trying to make sense of everything. It’s opened my eyes, my perspective on life is very different now.”
Sam Thompson, Louise’s younger brother, also joined her on the This Morning sofa to discuss how her health journey has changed their sibling dynamic. Sam said: “Louise is the bravest person I know… I’ve never met anyone braver.” He continued: “I sort of welled up and cried a little bit when Louise had these little things dangling down from the ceiling in her house and little extracts from the book and she was like, ‘Can you read the passage about you’… I read it and she was basically like, ‘He’s become my big brother.’”
In 2022, Louise was diagnosed with Lupus – a long-term condition that causes joint pain, skin rashes and exhaustion. At the time, the mum-of-one described the agony she endured as “intolerable”.
Then, in May 2023, Louise revealed that she had suffered “a major haemorrhage” earlier that year, which resulted in her needing emergency surgery. The horror incident, which left Louise requiring several litres of blood and fluids, occurred mere days before she, Ryan and Leo had been due to fly out to St. Lucia to visit friends. Had it happened when she was already over there, she believes she wouldn’t have survived.
Things took a turn the following year when Louise fell ill during a family holiday abroad and was forced to book an early flight home. After immediately heading to A&E, Louise spent more than two weeks in hospital before she was allowed home. Addressing fans from her hospital bed, the star shared how she was “feeling v grateful for home and for life”.
In April of last year, Louise, who lives with ulcerative colitis, opened up about her life-saving stoma bag, which she described as “the grey bag that may well save my life”. Revealing the bag to followers in an Instagram video, Louise reflected: “Isn’t it bizarre that this little grey pouch is the price I pay for good health! I say good riddance to that nasty menacing colon! Please be kind”.
According to the Bladder & Bowel Community, common reasons for needing a colostomy bag include bowel cancer, bladder cancer, inflammatory bowel disease (Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis), diverticulitis, or an obstruction to a person’s bladder or bowel.
Those with ulcerative colitis, chronic inflammation of the colon and rectum, may require surgery to remove their entire colon should they suffer serious complications such as uncontrolled bleeding or severe inflammation. During this surgery, one end of the large intestine is brought through the abdominal wall by creating an opening in the skin known as a stoma. A pouch is then fitted to the opening, collecting faeces. This is known as a colostomy bag.
Unfortunately, there were further complications in store when, in November 2024, Louise had to undergo emergency surgery, after which she went into septic shock. Announcing what had happened at the time, partner Ryan said: “I can’t believe we’re back in this situation. My heartbeat is skipping around all over the place, which is an indication of how heavy and raw it all feels. It’s very unexpected and a difficult pill to swallow.”
*If you are struggling with mental health, you can speak to a trained advisor from Mind mental health charity on 0300 123 3393 or email info@mind.org.uk
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