Emmerdale star Amy Walsh and EastEnders partner Toby-Alexander Smith have announced the name of their newborn baby.
The soap stars welcomed their baby Bonnie May Smith over the Christmas period and have spoken to OK! about their joy at welcoming their first child together.
"Whenever we hypothetically talked about our family, we always said 'our little Bonnie’,” said Amy, who plays Tracy Metcalfe in Emmerdale.
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"When she came, she couldn't have been more of a Bonnie."
Partner Toby-Alexander, who plays Gary Atkins in EastEnders, explained how the couple came to decide their child’s name.
He said: "We'd go on walks around the lake where Amy used to live in Leeds during lockdown and talk about names. Bonnie was one that came up really early, even before Amy was pregnant."
It was a dramatic pregnancy for Amy, although her sister, former Girls Aloud singer Kimberley Walsh, made sure the couple still got to have some Christmas food at the hospital.
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"She arrived on December 27. Her due date was Christmas Eve.
"A few weeks prior to that, we had some drama as we got covid. We had two weeks of worrying that I would go into labour while we had covid, which would mean Toby wouldn’t have been able to be there," Amy said.
"On Boxing Day, I woke up and thought my waters had broken. It was just like a trickle, so I couldn't really tell. I had tested positive for Group B strep, which is an infection we carry as adults but with pregnancy it can affect the baby if you've got it at the time of labour, so after your waters break you have to go on antibiotics and I needed to be induced as the risk of infection was heightened.
"We did the pessary but changed to the drip pretty quickly to get things moving faster, because the time since my waters broke had been too long. It was an intense induction, the pain was strong but I wasn't dilating.
"We had about 12 hours of that and I had to have an epidural as the pain was so strong.”
We are delighted to see everything worked out in the end for the soap couple and we congratulate them on the arrival of Bonnie.
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