Formula One presenter Natalie Pinkham tells of traumatic birth experience

In an exclusive photoshoot and interview with Hello! magazine, she and husband Owain Malbyoff have posed in their new West London home with four-month-old, Wilf.

She revealed: “I have come away from all of this with two things. One a beautiful, gorgeous baby boy and also a total understanding that women need to talk about what happens to them when things go wrong.”

Natalie went into labour six days past her due date and, with her baby in distress, she had to have an emergency Caesarian section.

She also suffered postpartum pre-eclampsia, and was hospitalised for a further 10 days due to her bladder being distended to four times it normal size.

She said: “You literally go through a trauma, but things are moving so fast you don’t get to process anything. Emotionally you are in a state of simultaneously being ecstatically happy and completely terrified within seconds of each other.

“A female consultant told me how important it was to talk – to my mum, my friends, Owain – whenever I felt emotional, which is pretty much most of the time.

“I feel she gave me that freedom to talk and to cry and that it was actually okay to do that. I think it’s important other women know that, too.

“We aren’t really encouraged to do it because we’re so busy getting on with everything else. But it’s been my therapy and it’s made us all such a close unit. I feel very blessed.”

Read the full interview in Hello! out now.