Ryan Libbey has given a candid insight into the health struggles of his fiancée, Louise Thompson.
In November 2021, former Made In Chelsea star Louise gave birth to the couple’s first child together, a baby boy named Leo. However, Leo’s birth led to life-threatening complications. Louise has since undergone numerous surgeries, as well as being diagnosed with PTSD.
Now, as he approaches Leo’s fourth birthday, Ryan has been reflecting on how he coped with the early moments of his son’s life.
Speaking on Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast, the 34-year-old admitted that the aftermath of Leo’s birth was a “terrible time”.
“It was supposed to be a routine C-section, 45 minutes, it should be okay. Of course, it wasn’t that, it was closer to four hours. Louise was awake, there was a lot of blood loss. When Leo arrived, he was not in a good place. He had respiratory issues,” he explained.
“When the baby came out, I was sat in between Louise here, holding my hand, white as a sheet. The baby here, looking quite misshapen on the head, a strange colour. All of a sudden, I looked up and I could just see the room had gone from relatively busy to very, very busy in both corners. I thought, ‘Oh, something is not quite right here,’” Ryan recalled.
“This is already so far from the version that anybody would hope for. You would want that beautiful moment of newborn baby, straight onto mum, and we can have a little moment of, ‘Yes! We’ve got this baby in the world, he or she is okay.’ It was not that. It was, baby was taken to intensive care, Louise was… dying, maybe, it felt like,” he confessed.
Describing their return home, Ryan detailed: “Louise could barely walk, she couldn’t climb the stairs. She hadn’t really had that moment with Leo to establish the bond. It was all very foreign, it lacked that connection and love. I think I went straight into the role of single parent mode, and primary caregiver to Louise, as soon as we entered the house. I think that was the start of a 10 month squeeze on me."
He added: “[Louise] was in shock. She was completely reduced to a version of herself that was just surrendering to the whole thing. She had lost the fight."
