TV personality Millie Mackintosh has spoken about struggling to love her body in the three months after she gave birth.
The former Made In Chelsea star, 31, and husband Hugo Taylor became parents to daughter Sienna in May last year.
She told Women’s Health magazine: “It was honestly quite hard to see my body after a baby. And I think it is for a lot of women.
“It can really feel like a shock and something that’s hard to love, maybe – and hard to feel good about… I did feel self-conscious when I went out and wouldn’t want anything to be tight to my tummy.
“And, yeah, I did feel a bit ashamed of my postpartum body. And it’s kind of sad that I felt that… It feels good to admit that and say, yeah, I did struggle looking in the mirror for the first three months.”
Asked if she feels more positive about her body now, she said: “I really do. It definitely won’t go back to being exactly the same as before and I’m okay with that… I feel more womanly, and I’m really loving it.”
Mackintosh, who appears on the cover of the May edition of the magazine, revealed last year that her daughter had been diagnosed with developmental hip dysplasia.
In a post on Instagram in August she said Sienna would be wearing a harness for six to 12 weeks to correct the condition, which the NHS says happens when the “ball and socket joint of the hip does not properly form in babies and young children”.
Her post added that the harness had a “90% chance of totally correcting her hip, so she hopefully shouldn’t need surgery or have any issues with her movement, so we are remaining positive and grateful that we found out early”.
Speaking to Women’s Health she said: “It was a really difficult and scary time. The stress of going from having quite a chilled baby to a baby that’s just crying and upset and you can’t do anything.
“Yeah, it was really heartbreaking… But as she’s crawling normally and doing well, we’re hopeful and remaining positive that her hips are healthy… They caught the condition early, so it shouldn’t affect her later in life.”
The May issue of Women’s Health UK is on sale from April 7.