The stress of juggling a new baby with high-profile careers is threatening to destroy their relationship.
Lying in a hospital bed recovering from an illness so painful that only hours earlier she feared she was “going to die”, Dannii Minogue knew she had to make some decisions.
In the end, her emergency rush to hospital in the UK over Easter to have her appendix removed turned out to be the wake-up call the Australian singing and small-screen star was waiting for. “Being in that much pain and not knowing what it was, was just horrendous,” Dannii says. “I’m just a new mum, I’ve got a little baby to look after. It was really scary.”
As doctors rushed to remove her appendix, the thought of her baby son Ethan was enough for Dannii to reassess how much stress working on the UK’s The X Factor was causing her, her child – and her partner. “It’s time away from your family and your baby,” explains the 39-year-old, who’s based in Melbourne. “If it’s a show in the UK, it’s a huge uproot and relocation to take the family there.” Sadly, the realisation may have come too late. A spate of reports suggest Dannii’s relationship with her partner of three years, Kris Smith, 32, is collapsing.
Although the pair publicly present a united front – they declared in a statement, “We are committed to our relationship and Ethan as always” – Kris recently acknowledged the private stress of their partnership in an exclusive interview with Woman’s Day. “It’s not necessarily easy,” he said.
“With us both working ridiculous hours, often in different parts of the world, you find yourself at home alone with the child. And it’s not the perfect world you’d like it to be, with both parents helping out. It’s for no other reason than work. But it can push you apart.”
Read more in this week’s Woman’s Day, on sale June 6, 2011.
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