Strictly Come Dancing legend warned to ‘prepare yourself’ ahead of seeing baby in incubator

A former Strictly Come Dancing star has spoken about her daughter’s ‘traumatic’ birth (Oti Mabuse/ Instagram)

Oti Mabuse has recalled how she was warned by doctors to ‘prepare yourself’ for seeing her premature baby in an incubator after giving birth.

The Strictly Come Dancing star, 33, revealed on Christmas Day last year she’d given birth to her first child with husband Marius Iepure.

However, a few months later, Oti shared it had been a difficult birth and she had suffered from sepsis, while her daughter was born ‘very’ premature.

She’s now spoken about what it was like seeing her firstborn being put in an incubator minutes after being born.

‘When she was born, she couldn’t breathe on her own,’ she said.

‘I don’t know the process. I don’t know what to expect. I don’t know the steps of how things are going to turn out,’ she told Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe on their Parenting Hell podcast.

Oti Mabuse said her daughter was rushed to an incubator after she started ‘screaming’ (Picture: Oti Mabuse/ Instagram)

However, she said doctors were ‘really positive’ and did a good job keeping her calm.

But Oti did recall being told that when babies were born, they didn’t cry at first, but her daughter was ‘screaming’.

‘And then it stopped,’ she shared.

The new mum was then told her daughter would need to receive further attention, but there was ‘no panic’.

‘They were very calm and spoke to me through everything and my husband went with them to the other room where they got her incubated,’ she said of the doctors and nurses.

Oti praised medical staff for making her feel ‘calm’ throughout the stressful six weeks in hospital (Picture: Oti Mabuse/ Instagram)

‘And they gave her all the tubes that she needed to get and they took me to a separate room where they spoke to me and helped give her milk.’

After medical staff prepared her for a possible shock of seeing her baby in the device, Oti was told by a consultant that her daughter needed to stay in hospital for awhile and start breathing and eating on her own.

‘There was someone every day there to keep having conversations with us about the process and her progress and how she was doing.

‘Her progress was so good that she was really excelling really fast.’

After a week in the incubator, her daughter was able to be taken out, but still needed to use the breathing and feeding tube, with the former coming out after two weeks, while the latter took about a month to be removed.

Her daughter spent a total of six weeks in hospital, with Oti then praising the medical staff and sharing how other parents going through similar situations provided an important support system.

The dancer appeared on Strictly from 2015 until 2022 (Picture: BBC/Guy Levy)

Although Oti spoke positively about making it through those weeks, saying the experience of her daughter ‘coming onto this earth was a very, very joyful one’, she did label it ‘traumatic’ in retrospect.

‘I think one of my things is that I’m one of those delusional people who deny stress. So, I think the process afterwards, it took me a couple of months to be like, “oh my God that was traumatic”,’ she told the presenters.

After giving birth two months early, Oti and Marius announced the arrival of their daughter when she was nine weeks old.

Oti, who hasn’t revealed her baby’s name publicly, previously aid they wanted to take ‘time for ourselves’ after the ‘big shock’ over her ‘unexpected’ premature birth.

Strictly Come Dancing is returning to BBC later this year.

Got a story?

If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@metro.co.uk, calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.