Corrie’s Kym Marsh was almost reduced to tears when she joined Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on This Morning to talk about her current storyline in which her character, Michelle Connor, loses her baby at 23 weeks.
The actress, who lost her own son, Archie, when he was almost 22 weeks, has been giving brilliant performances, which have won her high praise, but one caller during a show phone in really hit her hard.
When a lady called Paula broke down as she talked about losing her baby at 36 weeks in only June last year, Kym struggled to hold it together herself as she listened to the story.
The caller confessed she found it so hard seeing mums and pregnant people:
“A baby cry is just torture because I didn’t hear that, and when you’re in the delivery room, you can hear people in the other room giving birth and hear babies crying.”
Kym welled up as she found the words to offer comfort:
“I totally get that because that was exactly how it was for me too, and I lost my little boy much earlier than you, but I will say it is really early days for you. June isn’t that long ago and it’s not that easy.”
Kim had earlier talked to hosts Phil and Holly about the storyline and how close to home it had been.
Read more: Corrie’s baby loss storyline broke our hearts
“We saw Michelle saying ‘what did I do wrong? I’m a rubbish mum’, and those are very much the things that go through your mind when you go through something like that,” the actress confessed.
She also revealed a little more about how the storyline was first pitched to her, and her reasons for saying yes.
“Not long after our producer, Kate Oates, started she came to me and said:
“‘This storyline’s been pitched, it’s something we would really like to do because it’s such an important subject and we would really love for you to do it, however the final decision lies with you.
“‘If you decide you cannot do this and you don’t want to do this, we will absolutely find you something else and this is not your only chance at a storyline’. They were wonderful.
“I went away and talked for quite a long time with my mum and my gut instinct was to do it. I just thought what better way to raise awareness than to do this.”
As well as all the work she does publicly, Kym, who shares five-year old daughter Polly with her former husband Jamie Lomas, also told the hosts how privately they make sure they honour Archie every year.
“We celebrate Archie’s birthday every year and I do very much mean celebrate. We celebrate the fact he was a part of our life. Polly knows all about him, she knows who Archie is, she knows he was her brother, and actually we all see Polly as a gift from Archie.
“What happened to me showed me something was wrong and without knowing something was wrong nobody would have intervened along the way and helped with Polly. We celebrate him so much.”
Read more: Simon Gregson reveals his own baby loss heartache
Yesterday we reported how Simon Gregson, who plays Michelle’s husband Steve, has also suffered 11 tragic miscarriages with his wife, Emma Gleave. Kym discussed how that impacted their decision to portray this story.
“Interestingly, I knew little bits, but not to the extent that we’ve found out since we’ve done the storyline,” she revealed.
“Simon opened up about it because we were doing this story. That was very much the reason we wanted to do this, we wanted people to talk, it’s been a taboo subject for such a long time.”