BBC’s Victoria Fritz gave birth shortly after appearing live on TV… but that was just the start of her story
The newsreader - dubbed Britain's all-time sexiest presenter - is thankful she didn't go into labour whilst shooting on location
LAST month BBC presenter Victoria Fritz went into labour five weeks early, shortly after appearing live on air.
A scrupulous planner, Victoria, 32, had discussed the options for her baby's birth with her GP as well as making note of hospitals nationwide just in case she went into labour while she was away working.
But, as her story proves, you can’t out-plan Mother Nature, and Victoria went into labour shortly after her on air broadcast from BBC Breakfast's Salford studios in Greater Manchester - hundreds of miles from her London home and her husband, Dan, 34.
The newsreader - dubbed Britain's all-time sexiest presenter - was then rushed to Manchester's St Mary's Hospital.
But colleague Sally Nugent, 45, had to step in as her birthing partner after Dan got stuck in traffic on the M6.
The new mum went on to tweet that the delivery was a "BBC Breakfast team effort".
However, behind the scenes of her son’s well-publicised birth, there was also drama hidden from the cameras.
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Shortly after birth, little William developed breathing problems and spent the next two weeks in a high-dependency unit.
She told the : “It feels surreal. Everything happened so quickly.
“We just feel incredibly blessed to have been able to bring our son home.”
While pregnant, Victoria carried on working shifts for BBC News, BBC World and Breakfast - the latter requiring her to make her way up to Salford studios and staying overnight.
Having made the last journey on Sunday, November 13, at seven-and-a-half months pregnant, she had decided it was to be her last.
She added: “The afternoon before I left, I'd planted 500 tulip bulbs so looking back I was obviously nesting like mad – maybe subliminally I knew what was coming.”
She went on to say that she and her Breakfast colleagues had even joked about William being born early, but that she didn’t expect it to actually happen.
Despite the drama surrounding her birth, Victoria did add that she was grateful - as she could have gone in to labour in far worse places.
She added: “Thank goodness I wasn't out on location.
“Only a few weeks earlier I was off the coast of Scotland at dawn on a boat chasing a giant tanker of shale gas.
“So although it wasn't quite the birth I'd planned, it could have been a lot worse.”