It was the image of her showering in a white bikini in the Australian jungle that propelled Myleene Klass into the spotlight and helped launch her diverse career. But she’s come a long way since those days, and family, being a role model and sharing her story of miscarriage to help others are what drive her now.

Fifteen years after that memorable moment on I’m A Celebrity…, Klass sees her body in a completely different light. Not least because, since then, she’s had three children, including her miracle baby boy, Apollo, born after four devastating miscarriages that changed her perspective on life.

‘I look at my body differently now because it’s come through so much,’ she says. ‘I was given every hormone known to man to keep Apollo in there, and I still feel the effects of that. I mean, I put on four and a half stone with him and, as a southeast Asian woman, that was a lot to carry. I’m not some glamazon, six foot, Naomi Campbell type – I’m Myleene Klass from Norfolk. But I’m proud of my body and everything it’s achieved. And, ultimately, I want to make sure I show it love, kindness and positivity, especially because I have daughters.’

These days, bikinis are so far from her mind that Klass forgot to pack one for the family holiday this summer. ‘Can you believe the bikini queen forgot her bikini?’ she laughs. ‘We had to go shopping for a new one when we got there. I was too busy packing for everybody else!’

The ‘everybody else’ she refers to is the beautifully chaotic blended family of seven (they call themselves the Klotsons) she has with her fiance, Simon ‘Sim’ Motson, a PR executive. As well as their son, Apollo, two, Klass has two daughters – Ava, 14, and Hero, 10, from her marriage to Graham Quinn, a former bodyguard for Hear’Say [Klass’s Popstars band], while Sim has two children from a previous relationship. It all makes for a busy – and noisy – household, she says.

‘Apart from the logistical difficulties, everyone has different needs, so you’re trying to emotionally and mentally deliver on all that. I find myself very thinly spread – there’s never enough of me to go around.’

Does she ever get time to herself? ‘Not really!’ she laughs, joking that she might spin out our interview for another hour to escape the mayhem for longer.  ‘Getting the work-life balance right is impossible.  The only way I’ve been able to half get away with it is by creating a work environment that is family-friendly. When I make videos, I do that with the kids. When I design clothes, it’s with my kids. My family life is my work life and everything I do is centred around what happens at home,’ she explains.

‘However, I know how much I wanted this family and I thrive on the madness. I love that when we go out, we’re a tribe. We’re our own party, which is just as well because no one invites us anywhere – there are too many of us!’

During lockdown, she invested in a bigger kitchen table, one the whole family could sit around. For Klass, it was a poignant moment because it showed how far she’d come rebuilding her life after the breakdown of her marriage in 2012, when her daughters were aged four and one. The split was crushing, she acknowledges, but meeting Motson on a blind date five years ago marked the beginning of a new chapter.

‘The table was an emotional thing for me because it was symbolic. I’d bought the previous table for me and the girls, the three of us in this home I had built for us. And now, because we’d met Sim and he’d brought his kids to the table too, we needed something bigger. The kitchen is the heart of our house and, in my head, I want to be an Italian mama. I love the idea of everyone coming together around the table – a real open house. That was my vision and I’ve actually got it! I feel so grateful.’

Ava and Hero call Motson dad and Klass has said that had she not met him, the girls would have been ‘short-changed’.

She says: ‘It’s been important for the girls to see a healthy relationship because, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. This is not about DNA. Sim’s here every day and steps up and I’m glad they get to see that. He doesn’t see them as just my children – he says “I have five children”. And the girls need to hear that.’

Klass and Motson’s son is the ‘glue’ binding the family together, and they all dote on Apollo. In a heartfelt Instagram post last year, she opened up about the four losses she had suffered before he was born. It led to her making a documentary – Myleene: Miscarriage And Me. ‘It wasn’t easy to film. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever worked on,’ she says. ‘I remember the despair, grief and anger. And the panic. But it wasn’t until I looked back at my diaries that I realised how broken I was. By the fourth time, it was just a spiral of absolute terror.’

The hour-long show will see Klass meeting women, including her friends and family, who share their experiences of baby loss. She is also backing a campaign by Tommy’s, the pregnancy charity, to change the care system to enable more women to get the support they need following a miscarriage. At the moment, the NHS won’t investigate causes until it is classed as recurrent miscarriage, which means a woman must suffer three in row. ‘We don’t expect someone to have three heart attacks before taking it seriously,’ she says. ‘And if the miscarriage happens before 24 weeks, it doesn’t necessarily go on to your medical records so every time [you deal with a new healthcare professional], they don’t know your history and you have to explain it all again.

‘There isn’t even statutory compassionate leave for miscarriage. All these women carrying around this pain. I interviewed my aunty and she hadn’t spoken about her miscarriage for 37 years… So much pain.’ Klass’s third miscarriage occurred while she was live on air at Smooth Radio. During a toilet break, she realised what was happening, yet somehow found the strength to finish the remaining hour of the show.

‘I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to go home because I was going to have to deliver the news and break the magic. But life doesn’t stop and I took my daughter to dance class as soon as I got back. There was no time to catch my breath because I have children who rely on me and who I need to protect.

‘So, to the people who ask how I carried on, I’d answer – what else could I have possibly done? Carrying on was all I knew. And if I’d lain in bed, I don’t know whether I’d have got up again.’

Naturally, her pregnancy with Apollo was fraught with worry. At one point, she was having two scans a week, each time going through agony before they found the heartbeat. ‘I had so many scans my midwife said he was the most photographed baby in history. I didn’t want to drink water because I was scared of needing the loo and seeing blood. I know how ludicrous that sounds, but anyone who’s been through miscarriage will know that stomach-tightening feeling when you pull down your knickers, thinking “please, no blood”.’

Her decision to speak out about a subject that affects one in four pregnancies has been noted by those in power. During a moving speech in the House of Commons this year, Labour MP Olivia Blake spoke about her miscarriage and praised Klass for helping break the taboos that still exist around the subject. Klass hopes her documentary will continue to push the conversation and empower more women to share their stories and feel less alone.

‘Normalising the conversation to the point where it’s happening in the House of Commons with women standing up and recognising each other is so powerful. If we can talk about something that happens to so many, then maybe it won’t feel so terrifying and women will stop blaming themselves. I feel that if I can be part of a change, then I’m turning this pain into power.’

And she’s not only speaking out about miscarriage. Klass was recently accused on social media of having her lips done, and responded publicly that as a biracial woman [her mother is Filipino and her father Austrian], these were the lips she was given. It was an example, she says, of how everything is viewed through the prism of the white Western ‘norm’. ‘I’m not looking for a fight, but I can’t leave a whole group of girls to think I’ve had my lips done to uphold a certain ideal of beauty when we should be celebrating what mixed-race girls like me have.

‘I called it out for my girls. They are like me but transported from Norfolk into north London, and they don’t look like their friendship group. I think the next generation get it. They wear the pride flag, they take the knee, they are brave. I think we’re living in an exciting time when change feels possible.’

Klass says she’s in awe of how her daughters’ generation has handled the pandemic and being locked down for so long. ‘We underestimated them by not giving them a voice in all this. They did everything they were supposed to, better than many of the adults. All credit to our young folk – they’ve been phenomenal. I’m proud of all the children who made such a concerted effort, from clapping on their doorsteps to wearing masks to adapting to online schooling – which was hell on earth by the way.’

She does wonder, however, about the effect on Apollo and the other lockdown babies. ‘Just as he was beginning to open his eyes and recognise shapes, we shut down the world,’ she says.

On the other hand, there were positives to come out of the experience. ‘I had time to just be Mum,’ she says. ‘I stopped expressing because I was home to feed my baby and that was a special thing. I got to see his first steps, hear his first word… I didn’t miss anything and, because he is my last baby, that feels precious. I don’t want to rush a single milestone.’

Photographs: Shutterstock

This article was originally published by psychologies.co.uk Read the original article here.

It’s a hazard of life in Australia, says Dannii Minogue, that at any given moment, possums might chew through the wifi cable and cut you off mid-Zoom. She’s laughing, but insists it’s a risk with every call she makes. ‘I think I’ll shoot into the air like a rocket if that happens,’ she says. ‘These little things are really cute, unless they’re in your house – and if they’re in your roof, they sound like a herd of elephants!

Minogue is speaking from her home in Melbourne, currently in the grip of its sixth lockdown since Covid hit. At the time of writing, everything is in limbo and she isn’t hopeful that her 11-year-old son, Ethan, will return to school at all this year. ‘I’m definitely not a teacher,’ she says with a grimace when the subject of homeschooling crops up. ‘That is not my field. I call it the corona coaster; learning how to deal with it as a parent, as a person and as a partner. I’ve definitely felt a loss of energy, and some days it’s been hard to just get out of bed.’

Minogue, who turned 50 in October, returned permanently to her native Australia at the end of 2010, after two decades in the UK, partly to be nearer family after having Ethan. But there were deeper, more complex reasons too – by the time she moved back, she was at breaking point, pushed to the brink by a level of fame that had become intolerable.

Her four seasons on The X Factor had grown increasingly stressful (tensions during the 2007 series with fellow judge Sharon Osbourne, who Minogue likened to a ‘school bully’ in her autobiography, have been well-documented) and she was also dealing with the impact of phone hacking, for which she would later be awarded damages. It took courage to walk away from a career that she had worked so hard for, but with her mental health at stake, something had to give. ‘Talk about a diff erent world…’ she says, comparing her life back then to the quieter existence she enjoys today.

‘It felt like a pressure cooker and [by the end] I didn’t know if it was worth it any more. The phone hacking had been going on for years before it was apparent to anyone. And, at the time, X Factor was on the front pages every day; as “out there” as you could possibly be. My work was supposed to be fun – it was TV and singing, and I thought “it shouldn’t be this hard”, you know? I was ready to give up, but TV was all I’d ever done and so that added an extra layer of stress, not knowing what I would do [instead].’

She vividly remembers her last X Factor show in December 2010. Watched by nearly 18 million TV viewers, the atmosphere in the studio was ‘electric’ as Matt Cardle was crowned the winner, but Minogue knew she’d had enough. Shortly after, she headed back to Australia with five-month-old Ethan and her then-partner, Manchester-born model Kris Smith.

‘It was the biggest show in the country and here I was saying to Simon [Cowell] and Melissa [Le Gear], my manager, that I was done and I wasn’t coming back. No one walks away from a show like that, but I felt really, really fine about it. Power comes from making those decisions within yourself – you decide to close one door, but then other doors open and, slowly, things started to change for me.

‘The X Factor was the wildest ride and one of the greatest things that ever happened to me, but it was time for me to step off the train. And, when I did, I kind of went: “Thank God I survived that.”’

She says the announcement earlier this year that ITV had no plans to bring back the show post-Covid brought ‘mixed emotions’, although she hasn’t watched it since she quit. Her trusted inner circle, plus therapy, helped her recover and regain the balance and control she felt she’d lost – but it took time to heal completely. Minogue says she wonders whether things might have turned out differently had there been more mental health awareness at the time. ‘None of that was spoken about,’ she says. ‘There was this feeling that if you were in the public eye, you’d brought it on yourself, and so I didn’t feel there was anybody thinking that it wasn’t OK, apart from me.

“There was this feeling that if you were in the public eye, you’d brought it on yourself”

‘My publicist in London and my manager have been through everything with me, and they’re amazing people – very grounded. I’ve leaned on my family too. And, just recently, I’ve been working with a psychologist on how to strengthen my responses, process stuff and move forward. These are all great skills to have and to be able to pass on as a parent.’

Minogue adds: ‘I try to keep very private about my family and to have a really normal life now – this is how it has to be, otherwise I can’t do it.’ She is careful about the jobs she takes and channels her energy only into projects that spark joy – which is why she’s filmed three fun-packed seasons as a judge on The Masked Singer Australia.

A lifelong love of fashion and design has also led to her own label, Dannii Minogue Petites, which has sold in Australia since 2014 and launched in the UK earlier this year, thanks to a partnership with shopping channel QVC. The autumn/winter 2021 collection is available now and features vibrant shades, sequins and animal prints. ‘Colour brings me happiness, so I hope there’s something there that people can really embrace. It’s been so much fun and has been my complete escapism during lockdown – anything other than doing times tables!

‘It’s amazing to read all the positive feedback from customers, especially people on the petite side – it’s very emotional for me. Like, finally, there’s something that fits. I’ve struggled my whole life [Minogue is 5ft 2in] and there’s still so little out there.’

It’s 30 years since Minogue’s debut album, Love And Kisses, hit the UK charts, making her a star in her own right. Until then, she’d mostly been known in Britain as Kylie’s little sister (although she’d been a household name in Australia since childhood) and a solid pop career throughout the 1990s and early 2000s followed, before X Factor sent her fame stratospheric.

But comparisons to her older sister were inevitable, especially in the early days, and Minogue admits they had a lasting effect on the way that she saw herself. ‘I have a different body shape to my sister and the things written about me were horrendous – but I look at the pictures now and I was just a teenager.

‘It was exhausting constantly having to brush that off. I always say to friends, particularly younger people, just because someone says something about you does not mean it’s true. It’s an opinion.’

Even in the early noughties, at her ‘slimmest’, her body image remained distorted. ‘I didn’t have to go to the gym, I had a washboard stomach, I was wearing crop tops. But in my head, I was always that person who’d had those negative comments. For anybody who gets bullied, it stays with you and it’s hard not to incorporate that into your image of yourself. But the greatest love of my body came from being pregnant.  It made me in awe of what the body can do.’

Motherhood was a revelation to Minogue. Before pregnancy, she’d never felt maternal and assumed she wouldn’t have children of her own. ‘I just never saw it happening. Friends would say “I’m getting married and I’m having three kids” when they didn’t even have a boyfriend! They always knew what they were doing, and I just didn’t have that plan. But it’s fantastic and I love it, and Ethan’s amazing.’

Minogue separated from Smith in 2012, shortly before Ethan’s second birthday. Despite the split, they have a good co-parenting relationship, and have navigated the twists and turns admirably.  ‘It’s not easy, but you make it work,’ she says.

‘Communication is key. It’s funny because Kris has two daughters now, and it’s gone from Ethan pleading with me for a baby brother or sister to going: “I’m not actually sure about this!” Now that he’s not the focus of attention, he’s changed his mind a bit! But as they get older, he’ll have two little buddies.’ She adds: ‘Kris’s parents are still in Manchester and they adore Ethan, so hopefully I’ll be able to bring him with me when I eventually get back to the UK.’

Minogue has found romantic fulfilment too, with music producer Adrian Newman. They’ve been together for years, but have managed to keep their relationship low-profile and it suits them both that way. ‘We’re in our ninth year now, so it’s serious and lovely. I think it’s much easier if you keep it out of the public eye – I’ve tried both! Sometimes you don’t have that choice. When I was married [to actor Julian McMahon, from 1994-95], or when I had a son with Kris, it was in the public eye whether we liked it or not.’

Minogue sees getting older as empowering, rather than something to fear: ‘I’m just really happy to still be working. When I was growing up, I didn’t see older women in music and on TV, and so I always thought this was going to be a very short career. But times have changed.’ She recalls Cher releasing the song Believe in 1998 and everyone being ‘in disbelief’ that a 52-year-old woman could still be a popstar. ‘Thankfully, we’re in a different place now and you see Jennifer Lopez doing amazing performances, and it’s incredible. If I’m on a magazine cover or a TV show, then that’s good for all women; I get a buzz out of that.’

She looks after herself but says she isn’t obsessive. With happiness has come self-acceptance and it’s cheering to see Minogue in such a good headspace after years of struggling. ‘I’m never going to have a JLo body – and that’s fine,’ she says. ‘I couldn’t think of anything worse than having a trainer come to my house every day. That’s not how I want my life to be. I’ll go for a bit more squishiness in my body and being in a really good place with accepting who I am.’

Dannii Minogue Petites is available exclusively at qvcuk.com.

Photograph: Michelle Tran

Words: Beth Neil

This article was originally published by psychologies.co.uk Read the original article here.

This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.

This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.