Amanda Holden discusses ‘horrific day’ of giving birth to stillborn son

Amanda Holden has opened up about having to give birth to her stillborn son Theo in 2011, describing the ordeal as a “horrific day”.

Speaking to Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on This Morning, the Britain’s Got Talent judge reveals that she had first noticed that something was wrong while watching Myleene Klass on Loose Women, who was also pregnant at the time.

“I just remember thinking, ‘Gosh, I haven’t felt him move for a bit’,” she says.

After trying to encourage Theo to move in the womb by having a bath and drinking coffee, Holden drove to the hospital to check with medical professionals that everything was ok.

It was there that her midwife, a woman called Jackie Nash, was unable to find the baby’s heartbeat and Holden had to face the reality of delivering a stillborn son.

Holden explains how many people mistakenly believe that a miscarriage and a stillbirth are the same thing.

“It’s very different to a miscarriage,” she says. “An awful lot of people go through this and I’m not on my own.

“People say they miscarried a baby, which is a horrible thing in itself, but giving birth and having a miscarriage are two totally different things.

“I always want to make sure you know he was still born.”

Holden held Theo after he was delivered stillborn, which she's grateful she had the chance to do.

“It’s a real mixture of being really angry that it’s happened and really scared that you don’t know what a child that’s dead is looking like,” she says.

“It’s a scary thing. But it was absolutely natural and normal when I held him, he felt like my baby.”

Following the stillbirth of Theo seven years ago, Holden has set up a fund via baby charity Tommy’s called “Theo’s Hope”.

The aim of the fund, created as part of Baby Loss Awareness Week, is to help provide bereavement counsellors in maternity units in the UK.

“In the UK one in every 225 pregnancies end in stillbirth – one of the highest rates in the developed world,” Holden writes on the Tommy’s website.

“Without access to bereavement counsellors grieving women struggle to move on.

“There is never a 'cure' for the pain of losing a baby but you can be healed in a way that lets you get on with your life."

If you've been affected by this, please contact The Miscarriage Association or Tommy's for information and support.