incontinence

ITV This Morning star Ashley James has opened up about needing surgery for her health condition.

This Morning star Ashley James has spoken about needing surgery after suffering with incontinence.

Ashley, 39, frequently appears on the ITV programme alongside the likes of Ben Shephard, Cat Deeley and Nick Ferrari. However, instead of discussing the day’s headlines on Wednesday (September 30), Ashley spoke about issues she’s been dealing with.

Over the weekend, the former Made in Chelsea star opened up about suffering with incontinence in a post on social media. She said: “Lots of you will know that since having Alf I’ve lived with various birth complications, and one of them is incontinence.”

She went on: “Our bodies go through huge, sometimes permanent sacrifices to bring children into the world, and we deserve support, not shame.”

Ashley added: “I’m still doing my pelvic floor training, still putting off the surgery, but in the meantime I’m not letting it stop me living my life.”

She was widely supported for her post, and has now opened up on This Morning about the condition. Ashley explained how she’d been in Paris to see Celine Dion with her partner, and had left her washbag on the Euro Star which contained pads.

Without them, Ashley feared she wouldn’t be able to go out, as she said: “When you experience something like incontinence, you have to plan your days and evenings around this physical thing that nobody on the outside really sees but you know can happen. I try not to feel shame or embarrassment around it.”

Ashley explained how the incontinence began after the “traumatic” birth of her son, nearly six years ago, where she had both bladder and bowel incontinence.

“The reason we are so shamed into silence, it doesn’t help anybody, it doesn’t help women. And it is something where you feel you’re the only person going through it, or you’re embarrassed,” she went on.

Ashley explained that she had prolapse after giving birth to her son, which she didn’t realise she could have so young. After she gave birth, during check-ups, she didn’t have her stitches checked and admitted she felt like an “after thought”.

But when she returned to exercising, she received a message from a physio who had treated her from pelvic girdle pain, who diagnosed her with prolapse. It was then that Ashley was told that the faecal incontinence she was suffering from was “not normal”.

She continued: “I think because of so much secrecy and mystery around birth, I just assumed, in the ‘mother and baby doing fine’ that maybe everyone goes through this but no one talks about it because it’s really embarrassing and humiliating.”

Ashley was referred back to hospital, where she discovered she’d been not stitched up all the way, as well as the prolapse, confirming she now has to have surgery.

She added: “For anyone that experiences incontinence, it’s not something you have to put up with. And I will have to have surgery.”

This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1 and ITVX

For more information, visit https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bowel-incontinence/