Ashley Graham has shared details of her traumatic birthing experience, revealing that she almost died from a blood haemorrhage.
Speaking to Glamour the model, who welcomed twin boys during a home birth in January of this year, said: "The night I gave birth to the twins, I haemorrhaged. It was 2am when my contractions started. At 3:45am I went to the toilet thinking I needed the bathroom, and Malachi came out just as my doula was arriving, in time to bring him into the world."
The mum-of-three went on to explain that over two hours later, she gave birth to Roman in her bathtub. "We didn’t even have enough time to blow up the home birthing tub because everything happened so fast," she said. "At first we were all celebrating," Ashley added, going on to praise the skilled birthing team she had around her before revealing that things soon took a turn for the worse.
"The next thing you know, I looked at my midwife and I said, 'I don’t feel good. I think I need to lay down,' and I blacked out," the 34-year-old recalled. "All I can remember is feeling a light touch on my cheek, which I found out later was actually somebody smacking the crap out of my cheek, someone holding my hand, my husband Justin in my ear, praying and someone jabbing me with a needle in my arm. And I remember seeing darkness and what seemed like stars."
Ashley says that what came next was a blur, and she later found out she had lost litres of blood, with her midwife resorting to pressing "her finger down right above my vagina bone to try and stop the bleeding." When she eventually woke up, the model says she "looked around the room, saw blood literally everywhere, and let out this deep, visceral cry — an emotional release from the chaos I had just experienced."
Following the haemorrhage, the model spent the next four days in bed, unable to walk for a week and confined to her apartment for nearly two months. Thankfully her twins were healthy and safe, something which she says – along with her husband and older son Isaac – kept her going. "It was a period of time filled with the joy of being with my husband and my three sons, the rhythm of our new life, learning and laughter, acceptance and recovery," she recalled.
