POP star Paloma Faith seems to have it all – but during a devastating bout of postnatal psychosis she started fearing her baby girl was not hers.
In a searingly honest talk, to tie in with her best-selling memoir, the single mum singer told how she felt a “disassociation” after having her second daughter through IVF treatment.
She even rang the fertility clinic to check if there was any possibility that her biological daughter could be living elsewhere.
Paloma said: “My hair colour is naturally dark, and my ex-partner is fully Algerian, but this baby was blonde, and it was really freaking me out.
“I went a bit psychotic, because after being in the clinic, I was thinking: Whose baby is this?
“I was really worried, and I rang the clinic and asked, ‘Is there a chance . . .’ I was worried that my actual child might be living in Hampstead with a family and having horse-riding lessons.”
Paloma, 43, had her first child, another daughter, in December 2016 and later had six gruelling rounds of IVF to get pregnant with her second girl, who was born in February 2021, during the pandemic.
She has decided not to publicly reveal the names of the girls, now aged three and eight, who she had with her ex-husband, French artist Leyman Lahcine.
Looking back on her harrowing second pregnancy, she added: “Because of the disassociation after having a baby through fertility treatment, then a planned caesarean . . . then they took that baby away from me, because she couldn’t breathe very well for six or seven hours.
“Therefore I didn’t have that first connection and then I looked at her and was like: ‘Where’s mine?’ Especially because the first one looks Arabic, so I’d had an Arabic baby already, and I was like, ‘Where’s the other Arabic one?’ I was really worried.”
The medical team put Paloma’s mind quickly to rest, reassuring her that the baby was hers.
She said: “Apparently, they pre-made all the pots first, so it has your name on it before whatever goes into it.”
She then quipped: “Who knows? It might not be my child, but I really love her, so I’m keeping her!”
Despite her illustrious career, behind the scenes Paloma’s personal life has not been without its challenges and heartache.
She married 36-year-old Leyman, who is of Algerian descent but from France, in 2017 but they split in 2022 after nine years together.
As to whether he was open to having a second child, songwriter and former The Voice judge Paloma revealed: “I don’t know. I was just like, ‘That’s what’s happening’, and then it felt like lockdown was an opportunity.
“It was really difficult to do fertility treatment while working, so it felt like lockdown was a great time.
“He wasn’t sure whether we would survive it [a second child] and then we didn’t, but she’s worth it.
We’re dark, this baby was blonde, I was worried that my actual child might be living in Hampstead with a family and having horse-riding lessons
Paloma Faith
“I mean, the kids are amazing.”
Paloma has had a string of hits including the tunes Only Love Can Hurt Like This, Crybaby and Lullaby.
Following the couple’s break-up in 2022 she went on to write her acclaimed album The Glorification Of Sadness.
Paloma said Leyman was not working as much at the time of their break-up and added: “I would have been happy if he had just done something, and it wasn’t like I was stopping him from doing it.
“I can remember when we had our first baby and he looked at me and said, ‘I don’t know what to do. I wish I could help’.
“I had no idea what to do either, that’s why I’d been reading a book about it for the whole nine months I’d been pregnant.”
Since then, Paloma has written a book, MILF: Motherhood, Identity Love And F*ery, revealing how she coped with the breakdown of her marriage before rebuilding herself through therapy.
It was the topic of Paloma’s “in conversation” event in London, in which she went into detail about her heartbreak, struggling with fame and her hatred of celebrity parties.
She revealed that she and Leyman had attended “separation therapy” so they could focus on co-parenting happily rather than being “at each other’s throats”.
She said: “Couples therapy in my experience was s**t — a load of crap — and it doesn’t work.
“You’ve got to do separate therapy, because you won’t say what you actually think of each other in front of each other, but separation therapy was really good.
“I actually thought it was brilliant, because it’s like having a mediator, and you’re not at each other’s throats. It was all oriented around being great for our children.
“It makes you happier if you keep your expectations really low.”
And she added with a giggle: “My accountant told me to be resilient and lower my expectations, and I’ve been doing that my whole life and it’s worked really well.”
Paloma has a close relationship with her mother Pamela, a teacher, after her Spanish father left the family home when she was just four.
Her mother has faced cancer, but despite her parent’s health problems Paloma says her mum was an amazing single parent.
She added: “I thought that would prepare me for motherhood but I wasn’t prepared because of all the issues that I’ve had, and the mental health stuff.
“I had a short burst of psychosis, and then longer-term post-partum depression, and I was less available to people who had been used to me being quite present.”
She told how she found life was a juggling act in the early days of motherhood, and added: “You choose between a shower and eating something in those snatches of time, so quite often I chose to eat something then not shower for five days.”
At the age of 26 she also became one of her 16-year-old half-sister’s legal guardians.
She said: “I thought that would help prepare me for motherhood, but it didn’t, because that prepared me for a type of motherhood, but not that incessant no-sleep deprivation, which was interesting.
“Now I feel like maybe I can wait until the teenage bit, because I’ll know how to do that.”
It seems clear that Paloma has bounced back stronger than ever, dazzling fans as she performed on Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage in June.
She is back on the road this summer and was due to play at Tunes In The Park in Saltash, Cornwall, last night and next Sunday she will perform at Verulamium Park in St Albans, Herts.
And all this despite a new bout of sleep deprivation.
Paloma said: “I don’t know if other people experience this, but as soon as the children start sleeping through you get insomnia.
“I’ve never had insomnia before having kids, but now I have it.
“I still wake up at the same time they used to wake me up!”
