FRANKIE Bridge was warned by doctors not to stop taking her anti-depressants while pregnant.
The 32-year-old revealed doctors told her she might not “be around to be able to look after” if she came off her anti-depressant medication.”
Speaking on an upcoming episode of Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum, Happy Baby podcast, Frankie admitted she went “into pregnancy quite naively” and thought “I’ll be one of those people” that blooms.
Frankie candidly shared she then had to make “a bigger decision on the anti-depressants” before getting pregnant.
“I stayed on mine,” she explained, before adding, “I didn’t know that was an option until that point.”
“I remember talking to my doctor, he just said to me ‘Frankie I just don’t think you can come off them’, because I had been hospitalised for my mental health before.”
Her doctor told her: ‘There is a real big chance you will have this baby and you won’t be around to be able to look after it.”
The Saturdays singer explained some kinds her anti-depressants were fine to stay on while pregnant.
“I really thought that while I was pregnant I would just be happy, because I had always wanted to be a mum and I always wanted to be pregnant,” Frankie said.
“And lucky for us it happened fairly easily.”
But then she admitted to Giovanna that she “found being pregnant really difficult.”
“My body really changed, and again I had no control over it.”
Frankie then realised during her pregnancy how her relationship with food changed, especially after having an eating disorder.
“It was the first time I realised I really controlled my food and I’d had an eaten disorder for quite a few years,” she explained.
“For the first time I was really hungry and I really enjoyed food. It wasn’t just there to keep me going.”
But then “the lack of control during pregnancy” around food made her “suffer mentally.”
“I was really depressed [and] the guilt that comes along with that, when all you’ve wanted was to be pregnant, it is a minefield,” Frankie admitted.
The Loose Women panellist has opened up about her motherhood journey in her new book, Grow: Motherhood, Mental Health & Me.
She is mum to Parker, seven, and Carter, six with husband and ex-footballer, Wayne Bridge.
Earlier this year, Frankie opened up about having “really bad withdrawals” from her anti-depressants.
She took to her Instagram stories to explain the reason why she’s suffering withdrawals is because she forgot to order more medication and due to the Bank Holiday weekend she was unable to get her prescription for a few days.
Frankie shared how her body was reacting to “five or six days” without her medication and said she’s been “really not feeling myself” on her Instagram Stories.
She began: “Just before the Bank Holiday I realised I’d ran out of my anti-depressants and obviously I couldn’t get any until after the Bank Holiday was over.
“And I still haven’t got them, so now I’ve been getting really bad withdrawals.
“It’s really weird, the only way I can describe it is you know that first thing when you have had a drink, and your eyes feel a bit funny and your head feels a bit numb and it feels like you’re in a bit of a dream?
“So I feel really out of it, like I can’t really concentrate on anything and I’m getting bad headaches, I’m tired, I’m feeling sick. Just really not feeling myself.”
The former Strictly star said that she was due to have her prescription delivered yesterday and would be taking her tablets as soon as possible
“But I do this all the time. I’ve now set monthly reminders on my phone so hopefully I don’t forget again.”
On top of forgetting to reorder her prescription, Frankie said that she’s just started the seven-day break for her pill and is on her period and feeling “hormonal”.
She added that husband Wayne “deserves a medal” for everything he’s “had to deal with over the past week”
Discussing her difficult week, Frankie admitted: “I’m going between that feeling of wanting to cry, scream and shout all at the same time.”
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