Kym Marsh Reveals The Agony Of Giving Birth To Her Tragically Premature Baby Son: 'He Was Tiny But Perfect'

In the book, Kym gives a devastatingly honest account of the traumatic time she and partner Jamie Lomas faced as the cervical stitch - put in to delay her baby's birth - proved fruitless as her waters broke and labour began.

'I just had to lie on the bed and wait for Archie to be born - and to die,' she writes, 'After what seemed like a lifetime, with one final push Archie came out into the world. He tried to take a breath and then he passed away.

'At the moment I gave birth to him, I looked up and saw Charley's (Jamie's sister) face. She looked horrified.

'And then there was just absolute silence. It was the silence that haunted me. No baby screaming, no doctors and nurses running around. Just silence.

'It was 9.41pm on Wednesday, February 11, 2009. Archie hadn't been due to be born until June 19. The midwife laid him on my chest and everyone started to cry.'

Kym goes on to explain her and Jamie's desperate pleas to their unborn baby to survive:

'Jamie had written him a card saying, "I Love You, from Daddy." We were both so desperate for our baby to make it. I was willing our baby to survive. "Please live, please live", I kept thinking. This baby was so wanted. I couldn't let him go.' I could still feel him kicking and moving inside me. Surely that meant he was still fighting? But I knew, deep inside, he was in real trouble.'

'I handed Archie to Jamie for a cuddle and they put a big tinfoil blanket around me. He was tiny but perfect. He had died the moment he came into the outside world but he was still warm. And so beautiful. He had a few strands of hair and tiny eyelashes.'

After Archie's tragic death, Kym and Jamie briefly separated, before reuniting and falling pregnant with their daughter Polly, who was born five weeks early in March this year.

From the Heart is released on 23rd June.