Caprice's 'insane' route to parenting
Caprice, now 48, spent her 20s living the high-life and dating toy boys, not really thinking about her future and the possibility of becoming a mum. Fast forward to her late ’30s, and after finally meeting her now husband, financier Ty Comfort, thoughts turned to motherhood.
Little did she know just how interesting a route she would take, ending with two boys who were born just three weeks apart.
Speaking on White Wine Question Time, Caprice told host Kate Thornton that after finding a surrogate to carry her embryo, she found herself naturally pregnant three weeks later.
READ MORE: How to become a surrogate mother in the UK
“It's insane!” she laughed. “Even my doctor said they're both miracles. In his 25 years, he's never seen anything like it. It's mad, but you know it was a blessing.”
After undergoing three unsuccessful rounds of IVF, Caprice, then 40, was told her best bet for becoming a mum was via a surrogate, something she wasn’t too sure about to begin with.
“I wanted to carry my baby,” she said. “This is my baby: I want to experience this. But the reality is I left it too late.”
Choosing a surrogate
Caprice and her husband eventually decide on a surrogate in America, due to an issue with the law in this country that allows the surrogate carrier to have a claim over the child.
She told Kate: “I would have loved to have done it here. You know, this is my home, but there's no way. Biologically mine and a surrogate could take it away? No chance! So, I went over to the States.”
READ MORE: Robbie Williams and wife Ayda Field welcome fourth child by surrogate
Thankfully, Caprice found the perfect surrogate, a “wonderful lady” who she’s still in contact with today, and thankfully her embryo took and her journey to becoming a mum began. That’s when things then took an unexpected turn. Caprice fell pregnant naturally – and she knows exactly when it happened.
“I was doing this reality show called Splash! with Tom Daley and I was wrecked from head to toe – I mean I couldn't even walk – and my boyfriend at the time [Ty] said ‘I know you're sore but please can we just…? I’m so randy, I'm dying!’
She continued: “I got pregnant that night!”
As both pregnancies progressed, Caprice and her surrogate had a strange moment when they were both admitted to hospital.
READ MORE: Best friend becomes woman's surrogate after she spent £50k on IVF
“I remember one month [the surrogate] had to go into ICU and I was freaking out,” recalled Caprice. “She got very, very sick and she went to ICU. Obviously everything worked out OK.
“I swear to you exactly three weeks later I almost went into ICU. I went into the hospital, I was lifeless. They thought I was going to lose the baby that I was carrying. We had exactly the same condition. How bizarre is that?”
A natural delivery
While the birth of her first son, born via the surrogate, was plain sailing, her own delivery involved one heart-stopping moment: during her C-Section, the doctor said he couldn’t find her baby.
“I'm in the operating room… I could smell my skin burning as he's cutting me away, and then his hands go in me and I could feel everything. He's in there for like 10 minutes and I said to him, ‘What's going on here? Can't you get my child out?’
“And he said, ‘Well, I can't really find him right now.’ I said, 'Are you joking?' I'm freaking out. I'm as white as a ghost, freezing. Feeling this guy going up in my bits. They can't find my kid!”
READ MORE: 'The nipples droop': Keira Knightley shares relatable mum problems
Thankfully her son was found, and Caprice was finally mum to two lovely boys. Jax and Jett, are now aged six, so she has started to try and tell the boys about their unique birth stories.
“We don't want it to be complicated,” she told Kate. “I started to do it recently - they kind of got it, kind of didn't, so I didn't push it. I’ll know when the time is right, but I do want them to know.”
And while her sons only have three weeks between them, Caprice and Ty celebrate their birthdays separately and are raising them as their own people.
“They're not twins; they're full blood brothers – they're both biologically mine, but they're not twins, and I don't want to raise them as twins,” she told Kate.
Even though her journey to motherhood may not have been traditional, the only regret Caprice has is that she didn’t do it sooner.
“I had them really late; I was 40,” she said. “If I would've known how brilliant it is – I mean it is a lot of work – but wow!”
She continued: “Your life changes significantly, but for the better!”
Hear Caprice talk about her modelling days, her £40 wedding to husband Ty and why she had to get her ego under control in the latest episode of White Wine Question Time. Listen now on iTunes and Spotify.
