The agony of my unborn son's death by Ben Fogle: TV presenter tells of his devastation after his wife suffered a stillborn at 32 weeks and nearly died herself 

  • Presenter Ben Fogle was thousands of miles away when he heard the news
  • He got straight on a flight from Canada, last year, not knowing throughout the 10-hour flight if either his wife or baby had survived
  • The couple have decided not to have any more children as it's too risky 
  • They plan to mark the one-year anniversary in Oxfordshire next month 

Heartbreak: Ben Fogle (right) was thousands of miles away when he heard the news that his wife Marina (left) had suffered a stillbirth nearly 33 weeks into her pregnancy

Heartbreak: Ben Fogle (right) was thousands of miles away when he heard the news that his wife Marina (left) had suffered a stillbirth nearly 33 weeks into her pregnancy

Adventurer Ben Fogle has been a castaway, trekked the Sahara, swum with crocodiles, rowed the Atlantic, crossed the Antarctic and survived frostbite and a tropical flesh-eating disease.

However, nothing he had trained for or endured could prepare him for the trauma of losing his third child.

Last year, his wife Marina suffered a stillbirth nearly 33 weeks into her pregnancy — and almost died herself. When Ben heard the news, he was thousands of miles away in Canada, preparing to celebrate his grandmother’s 100th birthday.

He got straight on a plane to London, not knowing throughout the ten-hour flight if either his wife or his baby had survived.

‘I lost a son I never met and had to get to grips with the terror of losing Marina. It still gives me heart palpitations and panic attacks,’ says Ben today. ‘And to have to name Willem retrospectively . . . it was just so unbelievably painful.

‘Having to decide what to do with my stillborn son’s ashes was one of the hardest things I have ever done. In fact, it never even occurred to me that we would actually have ashes.’

Next month it will be a year since the loss of Willem, and the couple are planning to mark the anniversary with a private ceremony in an Oxfordshire church, just the two of them and the priest who married them.

‘We felt we should do something,’ he says, clearly still quite deeply adrift in grief.

‘Perhaps people find it hard to understand how losing a child before it has been born can affect you so deeply, but it really does. It feels like something has been stolen from you.

‘I mean, you see the scans and dream, don’t you? You imagine what they are going to look like, you talk about names. So when that is gone it feels so desperately unfair.’

It has been a tumultuous year for the Fogles, a great wave of sadness followed by another smaller — but keenly felt — wave of gratitude for the blessings they already have. Chiefly their children Ludo, six, and Iona, four.

Marina suffered a miscarriage before the birth of Ludo, then had an emergency Caesarean during complications with his birth.

In 2013, these difficult childbirth experiences inspired her to open a pregnancy advisory clinic in London with her GP sister, Chiara Hunt. She has said the capital can be ‘daunting and lonely’ for mothers, and her wish is to guide as many as possible through the experience.

Family: TV presenter Ben Fogle, pictured with his wife Marina and children Iona (left) and Ludo (right), on holiday in the Algarve, Portugal, in 2013. The couple had always planned to have a large family but have now decided not to have another child as the risk is too great for Marina

Family: TV presenter Ben Fogle, pictured with his wife Marina and children Iona (left) and Ludo (right), on holiday in the Algarve, Portugal, in 2013. The couple had always planned to have a large family but have now decided not to have another child as the risk is too great for Marina

The couple had always planned to have a large family but have now decided not to try for another child, as it might be too risky for Marina’s health.

‘That is sad, but sometimes you can’t always attain your dream,’ says Ben. ‘We have both resigned ourselves to the fact that if it wasn’t meant to be, it wasn’t meant to be. But we are an optimistic family. We want to concentrate on what we have, rather than what we don’t have.’

And what they have is a lot.

The Fogles are a strikingly attractive family, a Boden catalogue quartet of clear-skinned blonde beauties; the kind of family you might use to advertise milk or Swiss muesli.

Surely it would be hard for any man to drag himself away from them for long periods, but that is what Ben’s job as a TV presenter requires him to do. He has just returned from seven weeks on the road in Tanzania, Kenya, Cuba, Costa Rica and Iceland.

‘I have a beautiful home and a beautiful family, but I seem to spend most of my life in a hammock in the mud. I just haven’t got the balance right,’ he sighs.

We meet in his favourite cafe by the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park, where he arrives with a bouncy step, his trim, bare ankles sunk into trainers, his turquoise trousers and blue shirt dazzling against his tan.

Far away from home: Ben's job as a TV presenter requires him to travel huge distances away from his family for long periods of time 

Far away from home: Ben's job as a TV presenter requires him to travel huge distances away from his family for long periods of time 

‘I’ll get the coffees, you get the table,’ Ben, 41, says briskly. He has suncream and water in his manbag and as this is the day of the minute’s silence for the Tunisian terrorist victims, he has already set an alarm on his phone so he doesn’t forget.

It’s the kind of organised approach one would expect from an adventurer who has trekked in temperatures of minus 40C and turned his rowing expedition across the Atlantic with Olympic oarsman James Cracknell into a best-selling book.

It is one of a handful of best- sellers he has written on adventure or animal themes. Not bad for an awkward little boy who had to move school five times and failed every exam going.

He also claims he is not even particularly athletic. When he runs half-marathons the competitiveness on the starting line always makes him laugh. ‘I can see it in all these guys’ faces that they want to beat me, and I feel like saying to them: “Don’t worry, you will.” ’

Still, he brims with a young man’s can-do vigour, and with his high, broad forehead, erect bearing and posh voice, one can see why he gets mistaken for his friend Prince William.

‘Not so much now,’ he says. ‘When I was younger there were more striking similarities, but I have become older and rather dog-eared with all the travelling.’

Five years ago, Ben accompanied William and Harry to Botswana on their first joint royal tour. The result was a honey-puff of a documentary called Prince William’s Africa, in which the Prince talked about his conservation work and not much else.

Adventurer: Ben Fogle has trekked in temperatures of minus 40C and turned his rowing expedition across the Atlantic with Olympic oarsman James Cracknell into a best-selling book

Adventurer: Ben Fogle has trekked in temperatures of minus 40C and turned his rowing expedition across the Atlantic with Olympic oarsman James Cracknell into a best-selling book

 Motivational: Ben's new series of New Lives in the Wild begins shortly on Channel 5, in which he interviews remarkable people who give up city life and modern comforts to live 'off the grid' in remote corners of the world

 Motivational: Ben's new series of New Lives in the Wild begins shortly on Channel 5, in which he interviews remarkable people who give up city life and modern comforts to live 'off the grid' in remote corners of the world

The Fogles were guests at the royal wedding in 2011 and see the Cambridges socially, mostly though their mutual wildlife conservation interests. So does he see a side of William that the public do not?

‘No,’ he says. ‘I think he portrays who he is, a very humble Prince.’

Unlike the Prince, Ben is a man who worries about money and his mortgage, and works hard to provide. He is a popular guest on the motivational speaker circuit, and his new series of New Lives In The Wild begins shortly on Channel 5.

The documentary features Ben interviewing remarkable people who give up city life and modern comforts to live ‘off the grid’ in remote corners of the world.

Ben seems to be a man who is happy to do what he is told. "She is my anchor, my crutch. I couldn't live my life without Marina." 

Ben has a passionate dream that this is something he and Marina could do themselves with the children, but she is not so keen. ‘She doesn’t do camping,’ he says. The three of them joined him briefly in Tanzania’s Serengeti recently, where he has been making a film about wildebeest.

‘It was my idea of heaven — no luxury, the rainy season and the four of us hunkered down in a little tent in squelchy mud. Watching my son feeding a baby orphaned elephant and singing to it was wonderful.’

One gets the idea Marina is the pragmatic and sensible one, whereas Ben can be impulsive and dreamy. He’d like to go on Strictly Come Dancing but she has vetoed it, telling him: ‘You have two left feet and the public would end up hating you.’

He seems to be a man who is happy to do what he is told. ‘She is my anchor, my crutch. I couldn’t live my life without Marina,’ he says.

He gets emotional when he recalls how brave and strong she was throughout their recent ordeal. At 33 weeks, she suffered an acute placental abruption. Without warning, her placenta had become detached from her uterus, starving the baby of oxygen and causing a life-threatening haemorrhage that left her within 20 minutes of death.

Presenter Amanda Holden went through a similar experience, and the Fogles want to speak out to help others understand how traumatic stillbirth can be.

‘I think the first anniversary will be hard. Particularly for Marina,’ he says. ‘As much as it affected me, Marina felt that she had failed as a woman. We all know she didn’t, but that is how she feels.’

Perfect match: One gets the idea Marina is the pragmatic and sensible one, whereas Ben can be impulsive and dreamy

Perfect match: One gets the idea Marina is the pragmatic and sensible one, whereas Ben can be impulsive and dreamy

‘She has spoken about it a lot because she wants to try to make something good from something terrible by helping other mums.’

Ben cries when he recalls a woman coming up to him in Devon recently, to thank them for sharing their story. ‘She had written to Marina, but what really moved me was finding out Marina had written back.’

The Fogles had bereavement counselling, which has helped enormously. Without it, Ben does not think he would even be back at work yet. ‘I could easily see myself getting into a routine of not doing any of it again. Television is about having confidence, and I tell you it definitely knocked my confidence.’

However, he has written a new book about his favourite breed of dog. The Labrador Book comes out in October, a paean to a breed which has always loomed large in the author’s life.

When Ben first came to public attention as an inhabitant on the BBC reality series Castaway in 2000, he had his black labrador Inca at his side. He met Marina while they were both exercising their dogs in the park, and at home today they have two labradors.

Walking them brings another form of very welcome therapy, for he is still struggling with the feelings of loss of control that the stillbirth brought. ‘I felt completely out of control, there was nothing I could do. And I would be lying if I didn’t say that it was still affecting me now,’ says Ben.

‘I still have to steel myself, but on a positive note, it does make you re-evaluate what you have.’

He is rather harsh on himself, for what his sad experience shows is that he is much braver than he thinks.

Just then, his alarm beeps for the one-minute silence.

Without a scrap of self- consciousness, Ben Fogle scrambles to his feet, stands with his golden head bowed, and has the grace to pray for those who are less fortunate than him.

 

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