Former EastEnders star Kellie Shirley has announced she is pregnant at 41, admitting that it was a “shock”.
The actress played Carly Wicks on the BBC soap, but it was while filming for the CBeebies show Biff & Chip when she started feeling unwell and learned she was pregnant.
Speaking to OK! magazine about her exciting news, Kellie recalled that she was “literally on [her] hands and knees feeling horrendous” when the on set medic asked if she could be pregnant – but she was convinced she couldn’t be.
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Thinking it was just the heat, Kellie carried on but was “sick for a couple of weeks” and finally did a pregnancy test, which “came back positive straight away”.
(Image: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)
Kellie found out she and her husband, writer Phil Davies, are having another boy to join their seven-year-old twins, Pearl and Louie.
Speaking of her pregnancy, Kellie said: “Last time was such a breeze in comparison.
“Being older this time around, I feel absolutely floored. When I found out, I didn’t tell people at work – I kept really quiet about it. I was just getting my head around it. Being an actress and freelance, you think, ‘Will people view me differently? Has the world moved on?’
(Image: BBC/Kieron McCarron)
“But I googled actresses who had had children in their 40s and found out I was in good company – Olivia Colman being one of them and look at her career. It’s inspiring.”
Kellie and her husband Phil have been together since meeting on a night out at a club in Manchester in 2004, and they got married in 2010.
(Image: Eamonn M. McCormack/Getty Images)
Their twins had different reactions to the news of the pregnancy, as Kellie said that Pearl was “so excited”, but Louis was upset and concerned she’d love the new baby more than him, but has since “come round to the idea”.
But Kellie and Phil won’t be turning to their twins for name ideas, as Pearl is desperate to name her new baby brother Barry.
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Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
