Made in Chelsea's Louise Thompson makes heartbreaking tribute to fiancé Ryan Libbey after traumatic birth
Made in Chelsea's Louise Thompson has made a heartbreaking Instagram tribute to her fiancé Ryan Libbey following the traumatic birth of their son.
Calling it the "hardest year of my life by miles", Louise candidly told her followers how Ryan supported her after she nearly died giving birth to their "miracle" newborn baby, Leo-Hunter Libbey.
After recalling how she "danced with death twice" in an earlier post, the reality star detailed the extra care she needed after spending a month in hospital following serious labour complications.
In a post to mark the countdown to 2022, Louise thanked Ryan for everything he'd done - including calling ambulances, waiting outside operating theatres for hours, sleeping on the hospital floor and bringing up their son as a "single parent" for the first month of his young life.
"He has had to witness things that no partner should ever have to," Louise wrote in the caption of the picture gallery.
"He has called ambulances. He has been inside (and outside) operating theatres for hours. He has had to bring up our son as a single parent for the first month+ of his life. He has slept on the hard floor of the hospital for a week. (I didn’t realise that he would sneak off to the chapel in the middle of the night to pray)… and that’s before things even got bad."
She said Ryan then "had to come home and organise the entire house whilst looking after a newborn because it was still pretty much a building site."
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He also coordinated Louise's whole family "so that they could come and visit me and minimise the stress", she wrote. "He has had to look after me and the baby for the first few weeks of me arriving home because I haven’t been able to look after myself.
"He has showered me, injected me, changed sanitary towels, washed my hair, cooked for me, cleaned the house, done every food shop, had MANY sleepless nights looking after the baby (sometimes colicky), driven me to the ambulatory care department for daily drips, not to mention the fact he kindly brought the baby to the hospital to visit me everyday when I was an impatient so we could bond (even though I was too out of it/hyper vigilant to be able to)," she continued in the post.
"He never complains. And he’s still doing the LION’S share of the work between the two of us. Ryan I commend you. I don’t know many men who would be able to handle this situation with such grace and fortitude."
Finishing off the emotional post, which features pictures of Ryan and baby Leo, Louise wrote, "You are my rock and I’m so sorry for what you’ve been through. 2022 better be our year!!
"I will do my best to be strong for u two ❤️".
Earlier in December, Louise told her 1.3 million follows how she ended up in intensive care and Leo in neonatal intensive care.
"In all honesty I never imagined that so many bad things could happen to me," she wrote. "But to dance with death twice brings a whole new view of the world - a stark reminder of how short and sacred life really is."
Grace Walsh is a health and wellbeing writer, working across the subjects of family, relationships, and LGBT topics, as well as sleep and mental health. A digital journalist with over six years experience as a writer and editor for UK publications, Grace is currently Health Editor for womanandhome.com and has also worked with Cosmopolitan, Red, The i Paper, GoodtoKnow, and more. After graduating from the University of Warwick, she started her career writing about the complexities of sex and relationships, before combining personal hobbies with professional and writing about fitness.