FAMILY Oti Mabuse Oti Mabuse: ‘I was singing through the pain’ giving birth
By Lauren Taylor, PA
Former Strictly Come Dancing professional Oti Mabuse says becoming a mum has changed her “in the best way possible”.
The 34-year-old, who is heading into the I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! jungle this week, says a year of motherhood has made her “more aware, more resilient, more sensitive” and “added a level of maturity”. Mabuse, a Dancing On Ice judge and two-time Strictly winner before she quit in 2022, says: “Motherhood really is non-stop and it’s a journey. It’s about finding out a lot about yourself and a lot about the baby, your husband, your marriage.”
Her daughter with husband Marius Iepure arrived ten weeks prematurely, in a “spontaneous, natural” labour in November 2023, and spent six weeks in neonatal intensive care.
It had come as a shock after a normal pregnancy;“I was still working, I was told everything was great, the baby is great. She had turned upside down. Her head was in the right place…”
Their daughter was born at 28 weeks and weighed less than 3lbs – “she was really tiny” – but Mabuse says she felt reassured everything would be fine, despite being diagnosed with sepsis herself.The baby, whose name they have kept private, was taken immediately for tests and placed in an incubator – her parents weren’t able to hold her for a week. Now the South African star, an ambassador for Pampers and their Preemie Protection Nappies which are designed for the thinner skin of babies born early, wants parents-to-be to be more aware of the possibility of premature birth – which affects one in every 13 babies in the UK.
“There’s so much awareness about birth, but there’s not much conversation going around the process of prematurity, of maybe your child can come at any time,” she says.
Usually,“you’re going to give birth, spend two nights in hospital, get in the car seat and go home but we were there for six weeks, the first time we saw her she was in an incubator, the first time we held her was a week later – it’s nothing you can prepare for.You don’t have a hospital bag, we didn’t have a birthing [plan].” Despite being unprepared, she says:“I actually really enjoyed giving birth.We were singing musical tunes. I was singing through the pain, singing all the tunes that I love.” Although “you’re in too much pain” to dance, she notes.
“Birth for me was just such a beautiful thing, a rite of passage for something that I wanted to personally achieve.”
And she felt reassured by doctors that her daughter would be fine, although it would be “a
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