Louise Thompson has discussed what it’s like to have sex after she had a colostomy following a harrowing few years of ill health.
The former Made In Chelsea star, 34, has been showered with praise in recent years over her candid online discussions about her health, helping people suffering with ulcerative colitis and mental health issues by sharing her journey.
Giving birth to her and Ryan Libbey’s son Leo in 2021 sparked a rollercoaster of health issues for Louise, after she almost died during the emergency c-section.
After this experience, Louise suffered with postnatal anxiety and PTSD – admitting she would cry up to 20 times a week.
This week, Ryan, who also appeared on the Channel 4 series, said his wife was on ‘suicide watch’ during the first months of Leo’s life.
On top of her mental health struggles, Louise also suffers from ulcerative colitis – inflammation of the lower end of your digestive system, including your large bowel and rectum, causing bouts of ill health.
She underwent a colostomy earlier this year to improve her health, introducing the stoma bag ‘that represents life’ in April to her 1.5 million followers.
In 2022, Louise also revealed she’d been diagnosed with lupus – a long term condition affecting the immune system that causes joint pain, skin rashes, and tiredness.
Now the former reality TV star has opened up about the logistics of having sex since she got her stoma bag.
‘I’d probably advise emptying the bag first but other than that stomas don’t flail – they are tightly stuck to your body,’ Louise explained in her You Magazine column.
‘At one point, I did hear Winnie [the nickname for her stoma] sort of crackling but I don’t think Ryan noticed. I did, however, make a mental note to put on some mood music the next time.’
This comes after Louise revealed her stoma bag had leaked for the first time on a flight to Mallorca with her family.
‘I noticed that when I finally managed to visit a loo back in my room after a long day spent travelling via air and then straight out and onto making local Mallorcan food for dinner, that I had indeed come incredibly close to having a leak,’ she explained on Instagram.
‘I can confirm that I had a leak in the lift because the whole thing had blown up, burst through the seal and onto my skin… but it hadn’t crept out any further. YET. I think we were moments away from a Leo-style explosion,’ she said referencing her son.
She added that she was wearing a white dress at the time so was lucky the whole thing didn’t explode.
‘THANK THE LORD for the angels looking out for me, protecting me from this humiliation because I happened to be wearing a white lace dress that evening and things could have got pretty interesting (messy), very quickly,’ she said.
Also this week, Ryan spoke out for the first time about how Louise’s health ordeal was from his perspective.
‘Those first 10 months, when I say it was bad, I mean I don’t think it could have been much worse at home in terms of the environment we had to just exist in,’ Ryan told Josh Patterson on the Exercising The Demons podcast.
‘It just completely unhinged her as a person,’ Ryan shared. ‘So we had daily visits from care visitors but they were also on suicide watch because she was saying things like “I just cannot get through this and I don’t really want to”.
‘She couldn’t really even barely look at Leo, let alone hold Leo.’
Louise previously confessed that Ryan had thought about leaving her at times and admitted she was ‘not a good parent’ in those early months.
Now though, the pair seem to be in a much better place with Louise’s improved health and her stoma bag, as the pair enjoyed Wimbledon this week.
With her recent book, Lucky, Louise further opened up for the benefit of others going through similar health struggles – and it’s storming the charts as a Sunday Times Bestseller.