Helen Skelton gave birth to her second child on the kitchen floor without her husband Richie Myler by her side in a harrowing ordeal.
The Countryfile presenter, 38, shares three children with the rugby player - Ernie, 6, Louis, 5 and four-month-old Elsie - and shocked fans earlier this week when she announced Richie, who she affectionately calls Dickie, had “left the family home”.
Helen was left devastated by the shock split, while Richie, who plays for Leeds Rhinos, has yet to comment on the news.
The former Blue Peter presenter regularly shares details of her family life on social media, and In an unearthed interview with the Mirror from 2019, she described the birth of her son Louis in 2017 as one of the “scariest” experiences she’s ever endured.
Helen relocated to France in 2015, when Richie began playing for the Catalans Dragons in Perpignan, and revealed she was forced to give birth on the kitchen floor on their French home without her husband by her side.
She said he was in England at the time, so had to labour with the help of two firemen - who had no experience of delivering a baby - and two of Richie’s teammates’ wives.
“I was in France and my husband was in England, and no one made it to me in time,” Helen explained.
“So I gave birth with just my three-year-old next to me, repeatedly hitting me on the head with a plastic sword, because he thought we were playing dinosaurs,” she added.
“Terrifying. But I didn’t have a choice, I just had to get on with it,” Helen bravely recalled.
The couple returned to the UK just two months later, as Richie joined Yorkshire side Leeds Rhinos, and while Helen looks back fondly at their time in France, she also revealed there was a sadder side to their brief relocation.
The presenter also alluded to the “crushing loneliness” she felt while in France for her husband’s sporting career, and said she felt “so isolated”.
“I didn’t speak the language and I felt so isolated that I used to go into the local tourist office just to talk to someone who could speak English,” she told the Daily Mail’s You magazine in 2018.
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