Ferne McCann has admitted that she ignored warning signs of incontinence after she gave birth.
The former The Only Way Is Essex star appeared on ITV’s This Morning and discussed how she was diagnosed with the condition at the age of just 28.
Speaking to hosts Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford, the 29-year-old said that she ignored signs that she was developing the condition, joking around about it with her friends.
‘For me, when I was pregnant, of course you go and see your community midwife and they encourage you to do your pelvic floors,’ she said.
‘My mum said to me, 'make sure you’re doing them' but because I was pregnant and just so excited about that I didn’t do them, and you’d be surprised at how many women don’t.’
Speaking about when she first developed the condition, the mum-of-one, who is mum to one-year-old Sunday, said: ‘I think, at first, it was a bit of a joke between friends after I’d given birth to Sunday.
‘It was like, 'oh I sneeze and a little bit of wee comes out' or doing the star jumps and you lose a little bit of control over your bladder, so it started off as a joke and I actually joked about it on my show.
‘But then over time it progressively got worse and I was like 'this isn’t normal'.
‘I was 28 at the time, I feel very much in my prime and I just felt with incontinence I would associate that to the elderly and something that would happen to definitely not someone of my age.
More: Ferne McCann reveals she has been trying a controversial parenting technique with baby Sunday
‘So for me it was really embarrassing, and even sitting here I’m wincing a little bit thinking: 'Am I really on This Morning talking about this?'’.
The TV star went on to reveal how the condition has affected her life since, saying: ‘It got to the stage where it was affecting my day to day life and I couldn’t do cardio anymore, which is something that I absolutely loved, I really feared going on long journeys’.
‘It can be fixed with exercises,’ she added, ‘doing Kegal exercising and that kind of thing but you can’t physically feel it, it’s more of the symptoms like leakage or losing complete control. There’s prevention’.
