![]() ![]() ![]() However, as with most first-time mums, it has taken Dawn a while to adjust to the fact she no longer has her freedom to do whatever she wants, whenever she likes. "Sometimes I feel guilty dragging her around – she has had to get used to sleeping in different cots and things – but she has been really good.” "Someone even came up to us and said, ‘Your baby’s been brilliant’. ![]() “When we flew out to South Africa she was so quiet on the plane. I can get quite stressed although it goes quite quickly. “Paul is very calm, I am the energetic one out of the two of us, which I think is a good way of putting it. We are trying to do one job on, one job off each. “I am lucky really because he is in the same business and can look after our daughter when I am working. “I just want to enjoy her at the moment.”įortunately for Dawn, her partner Paul has proved to be a hands-on dad. So that is why I am only having one,” she says. "You can pack them and the dog into the car and do most things. “As an actor you are moving around all the time and with one child you are still quite portable. However, for now, the experience of being a first-time mum has put her off having any more children. “But we only have one child, many working mums have three. "I suddenly thought, ‘What am I doing?’ and broke down sobbing,” she recalls. “I remember driving to Oxford from Whitstable and I was stuck in a traffic jam and it was so stressful. “There was one time when I was doing 20-hour days, spending the whole day with the baby then on stage at nights on tour. Unsurprisingly, the hectic routine she juggled with work, night feeds, raging hormones and the stress of having a newborn, eventually took its toll. Then in September she flew back to South Africa with Coco and Paul to film the series finale of Wild at Heart, which goes out this Sunday. Not only has she become a mum, she moved from a flat in London to a house in the coastal town of Whitstable in Kent, which is now being renovated by builders, she has toured the country in a Noel Coward stage play, and filmed another drama for the BBC. Instead of taking up to a year’s maternity leave as many new mothers choose to do, Dawn went straight back to work and her feet have still not really touched the ground.Īnd the past 12 months, she admits, have been, without doubt, the busiest of her life. “People do warn you how tough it is being a working mother but you never really know until it is happening to you,” she says. Dawn lost more than two litres of blood and needed an emergency blood transfusion.ĭespite the trauma she barely had time to rest and recover. Little Coco Christie Mary arrived on Novemto the delight of Dawn and her actor boyfriend Paul Blair, 42.īut straight after the birth, things went badly wrong. “I wanted to have a natural birth and it took me a while to get my head around having a caesarean, but in the end, it was pretty amazing when she popped out.” “I had been put on bed rest for a few days,” says Dawn. This was so serious doctors advised her to have a caesarean section but complications also meant she was forced to be written out of Wild at Heart early and dash home for the birth. She had been diagnosed with placenta praevia, a condition where the placenta grows over the opening of the cervix, making natural birth difficult. So it is no great surprise Dawn struggled as her pregnancy had not gone according to plan. ![]() “Four weeks after having Coco, I thought to myself, ‘This is supposed to be amazing and I am not enjoying it at all.’” “It is like Chinese water torture!” exclaims the actress. Dawn Steele has always acted like she is made of stern stuff.įor her role as vet Alice Trevanion in ITV1 drama Wild at Heart, she filmed for months on end in the heat of South Africa’s bushland, stepped into cages with lions, put her hand into elephants’ mouths and got up close and personal with all manner of wild animals.Įven her co-star and on-screen husband Stephen Tompkinson describes her as “fearless”.īut nothing prepared the actress for having a baby.ĭawn, 37, gave birth to daughter Coco just over a year ago and she has few good words to say about the onslaught of labour and sleep-deprived nights of early motherhood. ![]()
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