Jesy Nelson has opened up in heartbreaking detail about the moment she was forced to stay apart from her premature twin daughters, admitting she feared “they wouldn’t know I’m their mum.”
The former Little Mix star, 34, welcomed identical girls Story and Ocean in May last year after a high-risk pregnancy. Although the twins were born healthy at 31 weeks, they were immediately placed in incubators, spending the first weeks of their lives surrounded by tubes and medical equipment instead of in their mother’s arms.
In her emotional Prime Video docuseries Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix, the singer is seen sobbing as she speaks about the overwhelming love she feels for her daughters.
“I love them so much. I didn’t think you could love someone so much,” she says through tears. “It’s the best feeling ever and every time I look at them I just want to cry because I think how lucky are we to get up every day and see our girls.”
But behind the joy was an agony few saw.
In another devastating scene, Jesy confesses she struggled to feel like a mother while her babies remained in incubators. “I’m really struggling with them being in incubators and not being able to feel like a proper mum to them,” she admits. “It’s really unnatural. You’ve been growing them for nine months, looking after them, and then to have them taken off of you… it hurts.”
Her voice cracks as she adds: “I feel like I’m grieving not being able to be a mum right now. They’re crying and my natural instinct is to go over and pick them up and comfort them but I can’t.”
Strict hospital rules meant Jesy and her then-fiancé Zion Foster were allowed just two hours of cuddles a day. “We’re only allowed to get cuddles for two hours once a day and that’s just so unnatural,” she says. “I hate that when we get to cuddle them I literally have to look at the clock because I’m like ‘oh god they’re going to get taken off me in ten minutes’. I hate that so much. I just don’t want them to not know that I’m their mum.”
The six-part documentary, filmed in secret last year, charts Jesy’s turbulent journey to motherhood, including the terrifying diagnosis of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), a rare condition affecting identical twins who share a placenta.
But after filming ended, Jesy and Zion were dealt another devastating blow. Story and Ocean were diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 1 (SMA Type 1), the most severe form of the rare genetic condition that affects muscle strength and movement.
Now, Jesy is campaigning tirelessly for SMA to be added to the NHS newborn heel-prick screening test. She hopes a simple £4 blood test at birth could prevent dozens of families from facing the same trauma — potentially sparing 33 babies a year from a lifetime needing a wheelchair.
