Sophie Ellis-Bextor: 'I didn't hold either of my babies when they were born'

When Sophie Ellis-Bextor gave birth to her first baby, she had been dating the father for precisely eight months. “It barely made chronological sense,” she says with a smile and a shrug.

The reason for the unlikely timeline was that Sonny, conceived weeks into a whirlwind romance with fellow musician Richard Jones, arrived early. He was born at just 32 weeks, weighing 3lb 8oz. The young couple, still unpacking after setting up home together, suddenly found themselves parents to a premature baby.

It was a traumatic experience they hoped never to repeat. Five years later, and reassured by her hospital consultant that the chances of the same thing happening again were “like lightning striking twice”, the couple’s second baby, Kit, was born at 31 weeks, weighing a tiny 2lb 6oz.

Those days spent in a neonatal intensive care unit, watching their babies fight for their life, feel far away. The boys are now aged 13 and eight, happy and healthy, and older brothers to Ray, five, and 17-month-old Jesse. Ellis-Bextor finds motherhood a joy, and hasn’t ruled out a fifth (“I can’t really say never”). Her latest album is called Familia.

“With parenthood, you don’t really get to choose much that happens,” she reflects. It is a typically thoughtful response from Ellis-Bextor, who shot to fame in 2000 when her single Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) pipped an aspiring solo artist named Victoria Beckham to the top of the charts. Her refined voice – the product of a west London upbringing and education at the smart Godolphin and Latymer day school – and vintage styling set her apart from the pop crowd, and her subsequent career has seen her combine music with modelling and a stint on Strictly Come Dancing.

Those striking looks can give her an air of nonchalant cool when she performs, but in person Ellis-Bextor, 38, is open and friendly. The daughter of Janet Ellis, the former Blue Peter presenter, she comes from what she describes as “a positive family” that takes challenges in its stride.

It is also a family with a history of premature babies: her younger sister, Martha, was born 10 weeks early, “so one of my early childhood memories is of going to visit her in hospital, seeing her with all the wires, the tubes, the beeping things, and seeing her grow up and flourish and be a pretty amazing girl”.

Nevertheless, she did not expect the same experience. She and Jones, a bassist with rock group The Feeling, were just 24 when Sonny was born. Throughout her pregnancy, she had sensed something was wrong, but her concerns were waved away. “I wasn’t feeling great,” she recalls. “I didn’t feel that I looked like myself. I kept saying to people, ‘I look puffy’ and they’d say, ‘No, you look really good,’ and I just knew it wasn’t true.’ At 31 weeks, at a routine midwife appointment, she was diagnosed with pre-eclampsia, a condition that can send the blood pressure dangerously high. Puffiness in the face, ankles and feet is a classic symptom. She was kept in hospital, under close monitoring, and the baby was delivered days later via caesarean.

Her due date was so far in the future that she hadn’t attended an antenatal class or bought anything for the baby. She had envisaged a “chilled” birth with low lighting and music in the background. “And then suddenly when you have a baby early, you’re a patient and your baby is a patient, and that’s very different.”

It was several hours before she was well enough to see her newborn. “I didn’t hold either of my babies straight away,” she says.

“And then I remember being wheeled down to see him, having only seen pictures all day, and being totally overwhelmed. I didn’t really see the box and the machines – I just saw this baby and felt the love for this little person who was now part of our lives, and you just know, don’t you, in that second that everything’s changed.”

Flash forward to 2009 and Ellis-Bextor felt “great” while pregnant with Kit. But when she went to her doctor at 31 weeks asking for permission to fly to Moscow for a gig, she was sent straight home to pack her hospital bag. The pre-eclampsia had recurred. When Kit was delivered, his lungs were partially collapsed and he required artificial respiration. For the first week of his life, she was unable to hold him. 

Did she ever fear the worst? “Um… I guess. I don’t know if Richard and I are really the sort of people to have that conversation. But there’s no point me dressing it up: you definitely haven’t had the baby in the way you wanted, and they’re not supposed to be born that early. So the first week or so is pretty scary.”

The routine for parents of “preemies”, once the mother has been discharged from hospital, is daily visits and supervised skin-to-skin contact – known as “kangaroo care” – which promotes bonding and is proven to have health benefits for the baby.

They can also change nappies – a task most parents can take for granted. “It is a really rare opportunity where you can get involved and start feeling like real parents. It takes on a whole new significance,” Ellis-Bextor says. “When you’re given the full-size newborn nappies on a baby that isn’t a full-size newborn, the gap feels so pronounced. So this is lovely - not just because it fits them and everything looks proper, but because it shows people are aware you don’t have that ‘other’ type of baby."

For that reason she is the ambassador for the new Pampers Preemie Protection range of nappies, developed with neonatal intensive care unit nurses for babies weighing as little as 1.8lb. They will be supplied free to hospitals. 

Some 60,000 babies are born premature in the UK each year, representing 1 in 10 pregnancies. Yet premature births, defined as babies born at 37 weeks or less, barely make a footnote in the pregnancy manuals.

"I know so well how isolating it is," she continues. "When they’re in intensive care, your role as a parent is quite limited.” She remembers going in one day to find her baby dressed for the first time. “I’d never seen him with clothes on. And I was a bit, ‘Oh, I would have quite liked to do that…’ But they have to be efficient because it’s a hospital. That’s just how it is.”

Ellis-Bextor talks of the “limbo” of having a baby in hospital. “People aren’t sure whether or not to congratulate you, so you get a lot of, ‘Oh… congratulations?’ And you have to hold your nerve a little bit because you go out and see people who are very pregnant, maybe friends who are continuing in their trajectory.

“Then you see people wandering around with newborns and you think, ‘I’ve got one of those, but you wouldn’t know it.’” It is one of the few times her voice wavers.

Kit was still only 3lb 10oz when he was allowed home at 37 weeks. “But you wouldn’t pick Kit out in a line-up as being a premature baby. And I was always quite wary of labelling them. It’s just something that happened in the beginning and you get on with the business of them being them.”

Her two younger children were both full-term. “Big, bonny babies,” she says with a grin. She loved feeling “really, properly pregnant” and of being able to do regular things with a newborn: breastfeeding, bathtime, allowing friends and family to hold them.

She and Jones live in west London and will soon celebrate their 12th wedding anniversary. Her Instagram feed is full of the simple joys of parenthood: walks in the park, trips to the seaside, running around the garden dressed as Power Rangers (parents included). With four boys to marshall, does she have to be super-organised? “God, no! I think family life is chaos, but I like it.” A “brilliant” nanny helps with childcare, and the pair juggle their work schedules so that one is usually at home if the other travels.

Her mum lives 10 minutes away and is a hands-on granny. Does she put those Blue Peter skills to good use, fashioning toys from loo rolls and sticky back plastic? “People ask me that a lot,” she sighs. “The reality is: absolutely not. But if that makes a nice image in your head then go for it!” And with that she’s off home to the happy chaos.

• Sophie Ellis-Bextor is the ambassador for the Pampers Preemie Protection range, which includes the smallest nappy available in the UK

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