EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW & PICTURES KELLIE BRIGHT AND HER HUSBAND PAUL SHARE THEIR ISSUE 1281 ● 29 MARCH 2021 ● £2.40 WEEKLY PREGNANCY JOY FOLLOWING IVF JOURNEY DELIGHTED DUCHESS WHY KATE IS FINALLY SMILING AGAIN KATE GARRAWAY ON DEREK’S COVID BATTLE ‘IT’S BEEN MONTHS AND MONTHS OF HORROR’ AT HOME SELLING EXCLUSIVE SUNSET STARS MARY FITZGERALD t Export £2.60/€3.29 t Esp/Por €3.30 t Italy €4.80 t Auz $8.40 & ROMAIN inc GST t CDN $7.99 t ROI €3.29 t NL €4.75 t FR €3.80 t Aus €6.10 BONNET t Malta €4.25 t Ger €5.30 ‘THIS WAS MY LAST CHANCE TO ‘WE’RE HAVE ANOTHER BABY – WE JUST NOT READY KNOW HOW LUCKY WE ARE’ TO HAVE ‘I ALMOST FELL TO THE FLOOR A BABY YET’ WHEN THE TEST WAS POSITIVE‘ are not just hot cross b These uns. These are... OFFICIALLY THE BEST HOT CROSS BUNS M&S 4 LUXURY 2 for HOT CROSS BUNS £2.50 Mix & match OR WHY NOT TRY... NEW M&S Extremely Chocolatey Hot Cross Buns M&S Made Without Wheat Hot Cross Buns Selected stores only – subject to availability. 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PRETTYPASTELS Sign up now at ok.co.uk/newsletter FASHIONSPY BEAUTYEDIT BEAUTYBUZZ LIFESTYLE & CHAT OK!REVIEWS OK!ICONS OK!HEALTH OK!RECIPES OK!TRAVEL OK!HOTSPOT OK!STARS OK!LIFELESSONS PHOTOS: ANDREW WOFFINDEN, CAMERA PRESS, CHELSEA WHITE, NICKY JOHNSTON, PIXELEYES, SIMON PERRY, WINFRIED HEINZE PHOTOS: ANDREW WOFFINDEN, CAMERA PRESS, CHELSEA WHITE, NICKY JOHNSTON, PIXELEYES, SIMON PERRY, [email protected] www.ok.co.uk /OKMAGAZINEUK @OK_MAGAZINE @OK_MAG 6 THREECHEERS ‘THISBABY INSIDEME NOWWAS OURLAST EMBRYO–IT WASMEANT TOBE’ KELLIEBRIGHTEXCLUSIVELY REVEALSSHEISEXPECTINGHER THIRDCHILDATANDTELLSOK!’S SARAHMORTONHOWHERROLLER- COASTERIVFJOURNEYRESULTEDIN A“MIRACLE”PREGNANCY WWW.OK.CO.UK 7 8 ellie Bright’s role as Linda Carter in EastEnders may have made her one of the most recognisable faces in the country, but away from the Square the Kactress is not one for the limelight. So when we got her call saying she was five months pregnant at the age of 44 and wanted to reveal her happy news exclusively through OK!, we were stunned to say the least. Kellie rarely opens up about her home life with hubby Paul Stocker, 38, and their children Freddy, nine, and Gene, four. But this time she has a good reason. While she is thrilled to show off her bump in our exclusive family shoot, she is also keen to open up about her IVF journey to make more women aware of the realities of trying to conceive later in life. “I want to be open and honest about this, because I think it’s important for younger women to understand,” she says on our Zoom chat from her EastEnders dressing room. “It’s important for women to know that, yes, you can have children in your forties and, yes, you can be lucky and do it naturally. But for a lot of us it doesn’t work that way, so I wouldn’t suggest leaving it late by choice.” Kellie conceived Freddy naturally and had IVF to conceive Gene after she and Paul struggled the second time around. Three extra embryos were frozen for potential use later – and following failed attempts at pregnancy with two of them, the final one will now become the couple’s third child. “It’s been a roller-coaster,” says Kellie, who is due in August. “But I don’t want this interview to read like a sob story. We know how lucky we’ve been compared with some families.” Here, Kellie talks about the process, reveals her sons’ reactions to her news and tells of how she collapsed in tears when she thought her last chance at having a baby had failed... Kellie, first of all huge congratulations on such lovely news! Thank you! It’s going to surprise quite a few people. Only because there’s an assumption when you’ve had two and when you’re my age that you’re done... So tell us, why now, at 44? To set the scene, I really struggled getting pregnant with my second child. I was 34 when we naturally conceived Freddy but we couldn’t get pregnant again. We tried for a long time and we got to a point, around the time I was doing Strictly, where we started to investigate IVF. I was 39 by this point and we went for it. It was successful. We managed to get four good, strong embryos. One became Gene, the other three went into the freezer. As Linda in EastEnders WWW.OK.CO.UK 9 Sounds like it was all smooth sailing! It’s not a walk in the park but we were so lucky it worked first time. I knew the second Gene was born I’d want to use the other embryos one day. Knowing we had them, we knew there was a possibility for another baby. I’ve always wanted a big family but because I had Freddy at 35, I’d let go of that dream. But when we went down the IVF route we found ourselves in a position we never thought we’d be in. So you always knew you’d try for a third? Absolutely. And it has nothing to do with the boys not being enough – they absolutely are. It’s just I never felt like I was done. I always had an itch, a desire to have more. My husband and I went round in circles for a couple of years deciding whether or not to just go for the third. I have a demanding full-time job and the reality of having a baby and a toddler within all of that is overwhelming, and we weren’t quite ready. But I had such an emotional attachment to those embryos. I know they’re cells but they have the potential to be another Gene! I couldn’t let it go. Eventually, we decided to go ahead at the end of 2019... and then Covid-19 happened. And that changed everything... I felt like the rug had been pulled out from under me. Suddenly, Paul and I were having conversations about not having more kids. Everything felt so uncertain. But by the end of the first lockdown, we did a complete 180. Having that precious time at home with our boys, doing simple things, we knew we had to try to make it happen. So we waited for the ‘GENE’SBEEN VERYSWEET LOTSOFKISSING MYTUMMY!’ clinics to reopen and started a frozen embryo transfer, which is less invasive than the initial IVF and only involved implanting the embryos. So who did you tell at this point? I actually told my bosses at EastEnders straight away that we were going for it. I knew I’d need time off and they were utterly brilliant. And when did the journey officially start? In September. But the first two embryos didn’t work. So this baby inside me now was the last one we had – the last chance of a pregnancy, because at 44 we were not going through IVF again. I believe it was meant to be. But those three months, between September and November, were a real roller-coaster. How did you feel when the first two failed? After the first one, I was philosophical. After the second one, I started to panic. And with the third one, I didn’t think that had worked either because I had a bleed two days before I was due to take the pregnancy test. It was significant enough for me to be in floods of tears with my husband cradling me. What was the bleeding? It wasn’t ever really explained but it wasn’t implantation and it didn’t affect the pregnancy. It stopped quite suddenly so I still did the test, even though in my heart I thought it hadn’t 10 WWW.OK.CO.UK 11 12 worked. So when it said “pregnant” I almost told him if I had a baby in my tummy.