Lockdown let me bond with my miracle baby boy after four devastating miscarriages, says Myleene Klass
WHILE lockdown may have put some families under strain, it was a blessing in disguise for Myleene Klass.
Months isolating at home gave the 42-year-old musician and presenter the time to bond like never before with her “miracle” baby.
Last Thursday during Baby Loss Awareness Week, Myleene bravely revealed she had suffered four devastating miscarriages before welcoming son Apollo with fiancé Simon Motson, 46, in August 2019.
Describing herself as mother to “four little stars in the sky”, she spoke in the moving Instagram post about the horror of, “Having everything one minute, a name, a school, then nothing”.
Myleene, who is also mum to Ava, 13, and Hero, nine, from her marriage to her former bodyguard Graham Quinn, 46, said: “I felt I’d failed my baby and my partner.
“The doctors took no chances with Apollo.
“I injected countless, endless hormones into my belly.
“He signifies everything good in the world to me, my miracle.”
Speaking exclusively to Fabulous hours before telling the world about her traumatic losses, Myleene shared her gratitude that lockdown let her witness key moments in Apollo’s life that she would have otherwise missed due to her hectic work schedule.
She said: “I got to see my baby’s first steps and his first smile and his first milestones.
“It’s very difficult to be around for absolutely every single thing ever, but I was there.
“It’s been a hard time for everybody but those were the things we will take away.
“To be able to carry on breastfeeding, do things that wouldn’t normally be able to happen for me, those were the positives.”
Little Apollo is only the latest addition to Myleene’s very modern family.
As well as her two older daughters, the Smooth Radio DJ has also welcomed PR expert Simon’s two children, aged 13 and nine, from his ex-wife into her life.
And after Simon proposed in their garden shed on their fifth anniversary as a couple in August, she will soon be their step-mum.
When I said this to Myleene, she replied: “You say soon-to-be step-children, from the day I met them they’re my step-children.
“I think getting married just officialises it.
“Nothing changes by me going, ‘Now I’m definitely the mother figure here’. It doesn’t work that way. You are who you are.
“I’m very, very lucky right now.”
Myleene credits her blended family for keeping her “mentally stimulated” , saying: “We spent a lot of time together, but it’s been incredible. It’s a time we definitely look back at happily.
“We’re usually a million miles an hour and suddenly it felt like things really did grind to a halt.
“We did our music classes together and the girls learnt a new skill. They learnt how to film. I had to put together an ad-hoc film crew.”
But while Myleene has appreciated spending more time with her family, daughter Ava has found it harder.
Myleene said: “For my children it has been a very scary time. My daughter’s 13, she doesn’t want to be hanging out with me.
“She should be out meeting her friends and going shopping and it should be a different experience to what she’s had.
“It’s really unfair how so many teenagers are being treated and criticised through Covid. They’ve more than done their bit. They’ve been phenomenal, they really have.”
Myleene is now gearing up for her biggest TV role in recent times as a contestant on the new series of Dancing On Ice next year.
Among her competitors will be footie WAG Rebekah Vardy, actress Denise Van Outen and former Corrie star Faye Brookes.
Just like Strictly and Bake Off, the series can only return with strict Covid rules. Myleene, who has begun her rehearsals on the ice, revealed: “Everyone is Covid-tested, everyone is in masks, everyone is in bubbles.
“We only hear the bad stuff, but when you see how people are adapting to the current situation and making it work, it’s incredible.
“I’ve literally got a nurse following me around with a test most days and that’s really reassuring.”
While Myleene kept her pro skate partner for the show under wraps, she did reveal that they are already in a bubble.
She said: “When I say we’re in a bubble, we are so in a bubble he’s not even seeing anybody else. He’s making an incredible sacrifice.
“He has to rely on me to do right by him and when I’ve seen the sacrifice he’s making I am not going to take that for granted. You start having massive responsibilities to each other.
“As wild as you want to go, there’s a whole chain of people here that this will affect.
“My producer at the radio station, he’s like, ‘I’m not coming near you’.
“We enter the station at different times, leave at different times, stay on separate sides of the desk more than two metres apart, don’t touch the same fader, don’t touch the same keyboard.”
Myleene has recently become the face of a new campaign called Share Good Times Not Flu launched by AstraZeneca, the pharmaceutical company working on the promising Oxford Covid vaccine.
It aims to encourage parents to vaccinate their children and combat misinformation.
Myleene said: “I’ve worked with Save The Children and I’ve seen the queues for vaccines and medicine that we have readily available in our country.
“I’m telling you there’s nothing that will break your heart more than seeing parents who are completely vulnerable and helpless standing in a queue that goes on for miles with their children, offering up their arms, waiting for peanut butter paste to keep their babies alive and waiting for injections we get for free in this country.”
Myleene, who is the daughter of a former nurse, added: “Children are the super spreaders of flu. That means they also take the biggest hit.
“Five and unders are the most likely to be hospitalised due to flu complications.”
Having seen the dedication of the NHS — on a national scale with Covid and personally during her miscarriages — Myleene believes it is our duty to help medical workers battle the double threat of a second wave during flu season.
She said: “On my road alone we’ve got four doctors and I remember during Covid I’d be getting up to go to the radio station to deliver the news and Chaka Khan and they’d be getting up and going on the front line to save lives. It’s very sobering.”
Already Myleene has been attacked by anti-vaxxers for taking a stand, but she has developed a thick skin since being thrust into the spotlight as a member of pop group Hear’Say almost 20 years ago.
She said: “Honestly, if there’s anything that hasn’t been thrown at me yet, I’ve yet to see it.
“We live in a time of misinformation.
“We question everything and some people’s opinion is stronger than fact. It’s a gutsy move to say, ‘I’m going to make sure my children are having this flu vaccine’.
“Sometimes you just need someone to stand up and put your head above the parapet.
“I can’t keep showing my children images of women that changed the world, women that spoke up, women that were brave, women that tried to do the right thing and then not try and do the right thing.”
Myleene needed that thick skin in July too after being attacked by trolls for sharing photos of her breastfeeding Apollo on Instagram.
Hitting back, she wrote: “Uh oh. Some of us mums are being chastised for pumping.
“No one bats an eyelid prepping their own breakfast, why choose to get flustered over my baby having his? Boobs were designed to feed.
“How funny that some fat, cells and glands could so deeply offend so many. Being a mum is hard enough.
“Seemingly, everyone knows how to raise YOUR baby except you.”
- Learn more about how to protect from flu at . See Myleene’s Flu Klass Of 2020 videos on the Share Good Times Not Flu YouTube channel.
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