Coronation Street and Grantchester star Melissa Johns has exclusively revealed that she’s welcomed her first baby, a daughter, who she ‘can’t take her eyes off’. The 35 year old actress, best known for playing Imogen Pascoe, has given birth to her little girl with husband Dan Hampton, just one year after the couple married in a romantic Hertfordshire ceremony.
The soap favourite has offered fans a precious peek into her baby bubble with her newborn daughter as they embark on an exciting new chapter. She posted an intimate photograph of her and Dan strolling down the hospital corridor with their little one tucked safely in a car seat, alongside another image of a bassinet revealing two tiny feet peeking out from the top.
In a touching caption, Melissa wrote: “Our baby girl is here. We can’t take out eyes off you”. The emotional post was accompanied by Frankie Valli’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.
The radiant new mum exclusively told OK!: “I thought I’d felt most emotions by this point in my life. Or at lease emotions I could compare to other experiences. But I have never felt anything similar to this. The love, the magic, the hormone dips. It’s a rollercoaster. And one I’m so so grateful to be on.”
Melissa, who was born with only one arm, added: “I’m so lucky to be doing this with Dan. He’s carried us both for 9 months and continues to do so now. He’s quite literally my right arm.”
This comes after Melissa recently spoke candidly about her pregnancy journey, expressing how ’empowered’ and ‘limitless’ she felt whilst expecting her daughter. She previously told us: “It feels so empowering to me. I’ve grown up not seeing people with body differences in bump photoshoots and I’ve spent a lot of my life with people telling me that my body is limited.”
She continued: “Having a limb difference, people have commented on it, judged it and put their own limitations on it. There’s something about growing and carrying a baby that makes me feel limitless. Growing up feeling people were limiting me to growing a child and feeling limitless, it’s a lovely feeling.”
The disability campaigner announced her pregnancy to fans in June with a beach photograph alongside husband Dan.
Prior to welcoming her baby, she shared that people would question how she would manage, explaining: “That just adds an extra layer of anxiety to the pressure that all first-time mums feel.
“We’re all worrying, how does this work? And on top of that I’m thinking, ‘What about when my husband is at work – will I be able to find a one-handed pram that I can collapse with one arm? How will I get the pram in and out of the car on my own? How will I drink a cup of coffee with my friends while holding the baby?'”.
“I feel like saying, ‘I don’t know yet, I haven’t worked it out, but I will find a way”.