‘I was hysterical & didn’t connect with my baby’, says Kate Ferdinand as she opens up on birth and ‘terrible mum guilt’

KATE Ferdinand has opened up on feeling ‘hysterical’ and experiencing ‘terrible mum guilt’ after giving birth to her daughter Shae.

The 33-year-old mum, who just this week took her young son Cree, three, to hospital after a horror accident on holiday in the Maldives, admitted she ‘didn’t connect’ with Shae after she was born with congenital pneumonia in July last year. 

On an episode of her Blended podcast, Kate, who married football legend Rio Ferdinand, 45, back in 2019, revealed all on Shae’s birth story.

She explained that her c-section birth was ‘emotional’ and filled with panic.

She shared: “In true Ferdinand style, nothing went to plan. It was quite emotional.

“I stepped into the theatre and I don’t know what came over me, but I started panicking. 

“I had the spinal, so you’re numb from the waist down.

“I had a sick bag next to me and was breathing into the sick bag.

“Everyone was trying to be happy in the room. I felt like I was high on drugs, I didn’t work well with the feeling of being numb down.

“Obviously I couldn’t move. I felt a bit trapped. At the time I was in a bit of a state to be honest with you.”

Kate revealed that when Shae, her second biological child, was born, she was silent and blue.

Kate is also mother to Cree, three, and step-mum to Rio's three children Lorenz, Tate, and Tia from his previous marriage to Rebecca Ellison, who tragically passed away in 2015.

She added: “Shae came out and she wasn’t crying. I was already in a bit of panic as it is. Now I’m freaking out even more.

“Eventually she did cry and wouldn’t stop but she was really cold, she was very blue.

“I felt very spaced out when she was given to me. I didn’t straight away connect as I’d been in this world of freaking out and worrying.”

'It was surreal'

After realising Shae wasn’t getting enough oxygen, she was put in an incubator, as Kate admitted: “It felt so surreal.

“You have to wait until you can move before you can go and see the baby, so I went in a wheelchair to see the baby and I was just hysterical.

“I couldn’t pick her up and I didn’t feel like I connected when she was first given to me because I felt a bit panicked, and now she’s in this incubator and I just can’t pick her up.

“I don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing, but I just didn’t really wanna be there. 

“I just felt like it was harder being next to her and not being able to be with her, just stare at her not looking well, then being away from her.

“Then I felt terrible guilt about not wanting to be there then as well. We talk about mum guilt and it hit me from the very minute she was born basically.”

The young Ferdinand, who is now one, suffered with congenital pneumonia and was on five days of antibiotics, as Kate expressed: “It is a struggle breathing and not getting enough oxygen to the lungs.

“We knew she was going to be fine, she just had to be on antibiotics and get her breathing to the right place, where she can breathe without the machines.

“I panicked that I wasn’t with her, awake all night. Rio slept like a baby.”

The blonde beauty, who rose to fame on The Only Way Is Essex, opened up on feeling ‘hysterical’ and described the hospital experience as a ‘blur’, 

She continued: “We went there the next day, I think, it’s a blur, I could feed her. 

“Hysterical again. I just felt completely all over the place. Still can’t really move great and feeling in pain.

“Anyone that’s baby is in special care, whether it’s for an hour or some babies are in there for a really long time, it’s just a really unique experience that changes everything because it’s just not how you visioning it going.

“You don’t really think about the complications and you think it’s gonna be fine.”

'Needed her close'

Since returning home with Shae, Kate confessed: “I’ve felt a little bit more needy with Shae, I want her next to me all the time, I wanna feed her a bit more, I wanna be with her. 

“No-one’s been able to get as close, just because I felt like I didn’t have that in the beginning.

“I mean I’ve eased off now, but for those first few days and even the first couple of weeks, I felt like I needed her close to me to connect with her.”

But things continued to be chaotic for the mother, as Kate shared: “My emotions were all over the place, I was upstairs quite a lot of the time and the kids were downstairs.

“I would come downstairs at the beginning maybe once a day and then build it up to twice a day and do it like that. 

“I just came down one day and said ‘none of you want me here’.

“The teenage boys were looking at me like ‘what has happened to Kate?’. Everyone was looking at me like I’m nuts. 

“In that moment, I genuinely believed that no one liked me and no one wanted me downstairs. 

“I was completely all over the place.”