Model Rhian Sugden has welcomed her first baby with Coronation Street actor husband Oliver Mellor after years of fearing she couldn’t have children
Rhian Sugden shares IVF journey
Rhian Sugden has given birth to her first baby with Coronation Street star husband Oliver Mellor.
The model announced the happy news she and Oliver had welcomed a bundle of joy on Instagram with an adorable photo. Rhian is now a proud mum to a beautiful baby boy. It follows a six-year journey for the 37-year-old to get pregnant after she revealed the IVF attempt was her “eighth time lucky”.
The star revealed that she’s never been happier since welcoming her first child, and she and her husband Oliver have yet to choose a name for their newborn son. Alongside an adorable photo of her baby boy lying in his basket, Rhian wrote: “All my boys! My life is complete! Baby Mellor born 25/04/24 weighing 8lb7. Name still pending.”
Opening up to the Mirror about her fertility journey, the Celebrity Big Brother star revealed she was “over the moon”, as at one point she didn’t think her and actor hubby Oliver, 42, who is best known for playing Dr Matt Carter in Corrie, could have children.
It comes after tests in her early 30s revealed she had a low egg count similar to “a woman over 45” and doctors delivered the news she had perimenopausal hormone levels. Then in September 2019, Rhian was left heartbroken when she was told her first round of IVF had been unsuccessful.
Talking about her quest to become a mother, she explained: “I was told that I may never be a mum – and I’m heartbroken. It’s unlikely I would ever conceive naturally. It also means the odds of getting pregnant by IVF have gone down from 30 per cent to two per cent – which was pretty devastating to hear.”
In 2021, after four attempts at getting pregnant through IVF, Rhian admitted she was struggling to “put on a brave face”. Before announcing her pregnancy last year, she revealed her and Oliver were now on round eight. Rhian didn’t have high hopes it work, but nine days later was ecstatic to discover she was pregnant. She wrote on Instagram at the time: “We were convinced it would never happen. But here we are, and we’re thrilled.”
With rounds of IVF costing as much as £15,000 a time, Rhian confessed she had launched an OnlyFans account to help pay for it. She told the Mirror: “We had one round free with the NHS but, the other seven, not so much. I feel lucky to be in a position where I can earn the money to pay for stuff like this. I’m not flashy, I don’t drive around in a Range Rover or anything, my money is solely going on IVF at the moment.”
Since finding fame, former glamour model Rhian considers posing for Page 3 as the highlight of her career, saying: “Even though it’s all non-PC now, back in the day, Page 3 girls were something to be aspired to – how weird is that, saying it now. Looking back even further, people like Sam Fox and Linda Lusardi, girls loved all that so to be part of that timeline before it got shut down, I’m forever proud of that. It brought so many opportunities, I wouldn’t have met my husband – it changed my life for the better.”
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