You might know her best as EastEnders’ Carly Wicks, but this year actress Kellie Shirley landed her biggest role yet – she became mum to twins Pearl and Louie.
And, in this week’s exclusive Closer Online column, Kellie opens up about how she’s been preparing for her first Christmas with two babies…
"My fella has been away for some of this week working, so I find I have a deeper respect for single parents - going it alone is hardcore and I raise a big fat glass of mulled wine to you all.
Fortunately both my best mate and mum have been on hand, morphing into a modern day Mary Poppins. Only, rather than a spoon full of sugar, they’ve brought a tin full of lactation cookies.
With them working on winding, changing and cuddling the babies, I finally have time to grab a shower, brush my teeth and even dip my toe back into a little bit of filming once again.
This week is all about the good old traditional English Carol service. 2 in fact. As well as trying to buy Adele tickets - an impossible task, when having to refresh the page on every device going whilst feeding two babies.
Fail.
I'm a sucker for a candlelit service, festive songs and, luckily for me, a church is big enough to fit a double buggy (mine’s so big and train-like, it could pass as something that belongs to Network Rail). One of the best things about living south of the river, means you get to cross it most days. So off to the beautiful Southwark cathedral, neatly tucked next to Borough Market, where steamy cups of mulled wine waft in its air. I love its Dickensian feel, and I love our city - so that makes me push back the recurring thought of moving out to suburbia, the idea of a big house with a football pitch garden and all that. Nope, London is where it's at… so I promptly delete my phone’s rightmove app that's become a bit if an addiction.
The baby book I'm reading states; "by this week they should be in bed by 7/7.30pm and sleeping for 8 hours solid."
No such luck - they're like a tag team, these two!
I've become a human dairy, so I'm ever thankful for BB cream to hide the 'just been dug up' new mum look. I'm also thankful for the smell of the German markets (delicious!) where I find I'm slightly abusing the 'I’m breastfeeding so I can eat EVERYTHING in sight’ rule. I've just started to express with my double pump (which the builder next door had the misfortune of seeing through the kitchen window yesterday) so I'm feeing pretty ravenous with it all .
Although. with the New Year fast approaching, this does mean I can start 2016 with a clean slate.
Until then, I will have another piece of iced stollen, thank you very much!"