EXCLUSIVE! Danielle Lloyd’s joy at baby number five: ‘Please let it be a girl! I’ll keep trying if not’

She’s already a mum of four gorgeous boys, but has long been open about her desire to have a daughter.

Now, Danielle Lloyd exclusively tells Closer she’s celebrating after discovering she’s pregnant with her fifth child – but still doesn’t know if her dream of a little girl has come true.

Danielle, 37, had spoken about her plans to have gender selection abroad in recent years – but due to lockdown and travel restrictions, she and husband of two years Michael O’Neill decided to try naturally and take the risk.

They found out they were pregnant in March, and thrilled Danielle tells Closer, “We were both just over the moon. Please let it be a girl!

“Michael is really hoping for a girl and the boys are desperate too – they’re convinced it’s a little sister. If it is, that little girl is going to have an army of protective big brothers throughout her life!

“I can’t wait to become a family of seven. I know there’s a risk it’ll be another boy though – having five boys would be totally mad! But, of course, the main thing I want is for the baby to be healthy. And if it’s not a girl – we’ll just try again after!”

Danielle is already mum to Archie, 10, Harry, nine, and George, seven, with her ex-husband, footballer Jamie O’Hara, and has Ronnie, three, with electrician Michael.

But while she adores her “crazy” family of boys, she previously opened up to Closer in 2018 about her longing for a girl, saying she wanted to emulate the close relationship she had with her own mum, Jackie.

She said at the time, “My mum and I are so close. There’s just nothing like a mother-daughter bond. When they grow up, my boys will leave me – but I don’t think a girl ever really drifts from her mum.”

After giving birth to Ronnie in 2018, Danielle tragically suffered a miscarriage in July 2019 – which she believed was a baby daughter. She then began to seriously consider gender selection – where a mum-to-be has IVF, and the sex of the embryo is chosen before being implanted in the womb.

While gender selection isn’t legal in the UK, it is in both the United States and Dubai – and Danielle and Michael had been researching different clinics in both locations. But, due to lockdown and travel restrictions, they knew it may be a while before they’d be able to travel – so Danielle tells Closer how she decided to try other means to get her baby girl.

“I stumbled across this book called The Babydust Method,” she says.

“It tells you all the best ways to naturally get pregnant with a girl – you have to track your ovulation, which I did via an app, and have sex the day before you ovulate, as apparently female sperm live longer than male sperm. I had Michael on a strict rota – when it came to the day before I was ovulating, I’d jump on him!” she laughs.

“I also saw a psychic, who I’ve visited before, and she’s never been wrong. Michael and I had started trying, but I hadn’t told her. And she told me I was going to get pregnant around March time – and that it’d be a girl.”

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And in March, after “a month or two” of trying, Danielle was elated when her pregnancy test came back positive. She says, “We were so excited – I can’t believe how quickly I fell pregnant! I’d had a feeling I was – but the test was negative. I did it again a few days later and it was positive. I’m hoping the psychic was right about a daughter.”

While Danielle is just coming to the end of her first trimester – with the baby due in November – she says this pregnancy feels different to when she was pregnant with her boys, saying, “I haven’t felt sick at all. With the boys, I felt really ill in the beginning. I’m just tired, but other than that I feel totally fine.

“I haven’t had many unhealthy cravings, like I did with the boys – fizzy drinks are the only thing I’ve been wanting.”

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The former glamour model also says her bump feels different to when she had the boys – and laughs that she can’t believe she’s pregnant again after overhauling her body with a bum lift, tummy tuck, boob job and lipo at a clinic in Turkey at the end of 2019.

She laughs, “I looked so good – and now I’m pregnant again! But I don’t care. A baby is much more important than looking perfect. I am going to try to eat healthily though – eat lots, but eat healthily and not totally pig out.

“Luckily, I haven’t been feeling like I want to. I’ve been keeping fairly active too, which I want to keep up – doing low-intensity exercise, like yoga and walking.”

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Danielle also says she’ll carry on taking care of her mental health, as well as her physical health, after suffering from postnatal depression following the birth of Harry in 2011, and she also struggled with anxiety and depression during lockdown.

She adds, “I wasn’t in a great place last year – my anxiety was through the roof and I was prescribed medication for it. But I started to feel better in January, and I came off the tablets before I started trying for a baby. I feel OK now, although I have waves of panic and anxiety.

“I am worried about struggling after the baby – but at least I know the signs that it’s coming, and Michael is so amazing to me. He knows how I get and he’s such a great support system.”

While Danielle initially told Closer that her fifth baby would be her last, she now says she thinks that she’ll have another via gender selection in Dubai, if she doesn’t manage to get her longed-for girl this time.

She adds, “We have a holiday booked for August, to Dubai, where we originally were going to check out some options. We’ll know by then what sex the baby is – so if it’s a boy, we might have a look into the options anyway.

“Michael would definitely have another – he’s already saying we’ll go again. I just want to concentrate on this baby first!”

Get the best celeb interviews in Closer magazine each week.