Actress Jorgie Porter has revealed she ‘felt like a hero’ after giving birth to her ‘whopper’ newborn daughter. Jorgie and her fiance Ollie Piotrowski welcimed baby Peony at 10.40am on December 10.
Jorgie, 37, and Ollie, 35, who share two year old son Forest, are utterly smitten with their little girl. And the Channel 4 actress has revealed her gratefulness at opting for a planned Caesarean section with OK! Magazine.
Jorgie, who stands just over 5ft 2in, said “She was a whopper! I knew she was going to be big because I felt massive the second time around. She was officially 8lbs 14oz but I’m rounding it up to 9lbs because I’m tiny and feel like a hero!
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“She was just a little chunk. When the nurses pulled her out after the C-section, I thought, ‘Thank God I chose another section because there’s no way I’d have had her naturally,” reports the Mirror.
The couple, together for five years and engaged for three, shared their pregnancy news in May, a mere six months after Forest celebrated his first birthday. Jorgie explains that the floral name Peony had been a favourite since Forest’s birth, and keeping it a secret for two years was challenging.
“We’d not heard of anyone with the name Peony and I love the flowers, they’re so beautiful,” she says with a glow. “But we were literally desperate to tell people her name before someone else had a baby and chose it before us! We didn’t give her a middle name because she’s Peony Porter Piotrowski which is already quite a lot for a kid to say, isn’t it?”
Peony arrived just a few weeks after Forest’s November birthday and shortly before Jorgie’s own Christmas Day birthday, turning their home into a non-stop party zone, which has been great for helping little Forest adapt to the new family dynamic. Post-settling in at home, Hollyoaks actress Jorgie Porter, who first graced our screens as Theresa McQueen in 2008, has had the chance to pause and ponder over her emotionally charged pregnancy journey.
Her worries were partly due to typical pregnancy nerves, but also because of her past miscarriage, leading her to opt for a planned birth. “Forest’s birth went so well but I think you can still panic when you do it again,” she shared.
“I wanted it to be in the diary and secure, and to know exactly when it was happening. I wanted everything to be the same so I could relax – the same situation, the same people, same hospital, everything. We even got the same room.”
Jorgie expressed her admiration for women who wait for natural labour but knew it wasn’t for her: “God bless these women who can hang on and wait for the moment when the rest of their life changes, but that’s not me. I wanted to know what was going to happen, I wanted 14 hospital staff in the room, everything. My instincts told me it was the right thing for me.”
The caesarean section took about two hours, though it “felt like 10 minutes” to Jorgie, and at 10.40am, baby Peony was born, crying healthily and looking a tad “squished”.
Jorgie recalls: “Actually, I just remember hearing the first cry, and then Ollie saying, ‘She’s not exactly beautiful is she?’ which was the funniest thing ever. She was all squished up because she’d been head down for a good few weeks!
“When we were back in the room I looked around and realised it would be the last time I’d ever do it, so I wanted to really take it in and make the most of it. Ollie stayed overnight with us in a little bed too. It was just a dream, it was immense.”
Jorgie firmly believes Peony will be their final addition to the family, given her mixed feelings about being pregnant again. She candidly shares: “There’s only been about 15 months since 2021 that I haven’t been pregnant, and I need me back, I need my body back.”
The journey hasn’t been without its sorrows. In 2021 Jorgie disclosed the heartbreaking loss of naturally-conceived quadruplets, followed by another miscarriage early into a subsequent pregnancy. Although her experiences bringing Forest and Peony into the world were without complications, she acknowledges the shadow of anxiety left by previous losses.
She opens up about the constant fear: “I think the panic always sits with you when you’re pregnant. I refused to let anyone celebrate any of the milestones when I was pregnant with Forest, I was adamant about it because I was extremely stressed. This time I made a point of us trying to enjoy every minute, because even if things hadn’t gone well, I wanted to be able to think, ‘Well before that was great.'”
Hollyoaks favourite Jorgie has set off on her official maternity leave in October, but with her “being obsessed with Hollyoaks,” she’s hinted at a possible early return to the Liverpool set before the year ends. She shared: “I love working, I’ve been doing it from such a young age, and I did Hollyoaks and Dancing On Ice at the same time. Obviously it’s not as easy having a baby too, but maybe I’ll ask them if I can just bring Peony to the show and then ask the costume department if they can just hide her!”
Her heart is also set on another dream gig – hitting the Strictly Come Dancing dance floor. “I miss dancing, it’s my first love,” Jorgie confessed. “So anything involving dance would be my dream. I cry every time Strictly comes on because I’d love to do it! “.
Now that their family feels complete, we touched on whether she and partner Ollie have made any more plans for their wedding after his Christmas proposal at Scotland’s Gleneagles Hotel back in 2021. Understandably, with two youngsters and Alfie filling their lives with joy, getting hitched isn’t topping their list at the moment.
For Jorgie, the engagement itself is magical enough right now. “I love being engaged. As soon as Ollie put a ring on me, it changed things for me. I know the love is there, and also I know we can argue and still be fine together!”