I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! star Dame Arlene Phillips has revealed she once mistook her pregnancy at 47 years old for the menopause. As she sat around the campfire with her fellow I'm A Celeb contestants, she explained that she often had to explain she wasn't her daughter's "grandmother", but her mother.
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Arlene added that she thought her pregnancy was the menopause for "four or five months" because of her age, and asked herself, "I can't be pregnant, why am I so sick?"
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Having suffered such a stressful and confusing pregnancy, one particular exchange with a doctor shortly after the birth of her second daughter seemed even more insensitive.
"When I went to a mother and baby class in Primrose Hill my obstetrician came up and whispered – I can never forget this – he kneeled down and said, 'Have no fear, it will get better – because you really should be a grandmother, so you’re going to have to find ways to understand how to be a mother again.'"
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© Photo: InstagramArlene with her two daughters Alana and Abi
EastEnders star Adam Woodyatt was clearly shocked, asking: "How hard did you hit him?" to which Arlene said: "I stood up, all of my five foot three, and went…," and mimed crying.
The Saturdays star Frankie Bridge, meanwhile, said it blew her mind that Arlene felt self-conscious about becoming a mother again at 47.
"The fact that she's here, she's 78, going through all of this with us, she's still dancing around," she said. "I imagine back then she was exactly the same. I get where she's coming from but I don't think she's got anything to worry about."
Arlene is mother to two children, Alana, 42, who she gave birth to when she was 36 in 1979, and Abi, 30, who was born in 1990.
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