TV presenter and journalist Sharon Marshall was horrified when she woke up covered in blood while six months pregnant.
47-year-old Sharon, who has worked as This Morning’s resident Queen of Soaps for the past 16 years, had already begun to worry she would never become a mother.
She had been through seven cycles of IVF and suffered two tragic miscarriages before her ‘miracle’ pregnancy.
‘When I saw the blood it put the fear of God into me,’ she told The Sun Online. ‘My blood pressure was massively high and I thought I was going to have to give birth months earlier than I expected.’
She was admitted to hospital, where doctors managed to get the bleed under control.
Happily, although Sharon had to spend an agonising few weeks under close watch, she was able to carry her baby girl to full term. Her adorable daughter Betsey is now nine months old.
But Sharon admitted she wasn’t able to believe Betsey would actually make it, until she was put into her arms.
‘I was convinced something was going to go wrong,’ she told The Sun. ‘I always felt like someone was going to say it’s all going to be taken away from me. I was terrified to jinx it.’
Sharon is now working with the British Red Cross to encourage other parents to learn lifesaving first aid skills.
‘When I was hospitalised during the pregnancy I feared I’d never make it to Mother’s Day,’ she revealed.
‘I had to rely on doctors then who were brilliant. But I know that Betsey is my responsibility now and in case of emergency I need to know what to do. I felt a lot more secure knowing how to do first aid, what I should look out for and what to worry about.’
The Red Cross is offering group first aid courses for parents, who can sign up online. The classes will teach parents how to help a baby who is unresponsive, having a seizure, choking, has a burn or has meningitis.
Sharon says she didn’t want to panic or have to rely on ambulances or Google in the case of an emergency.
‘I wanted to know what to do by instinct,’ she explained. ‘Now I do. I think it’s a really valuable skill for people to have.’
