Rocker Stewart tells of baby scare

Rod Stewart and Penny Lancaster have spoken about how their first child together was born with the umbilical cord dangerously wrapped twice around his neck.

Lancaster, 34, was in a candle-lit bathing pool when doctors discovered that the unborn baby’s heart rate had dropped.

Stewart, 60, told Hello! magazine: “Without wanting to worry Penny, they told us, ‘We have to get this baby out as soon as possible’.

“We were trying to get Penny out of the pool but she was so tired and weak that she was falling asleep. Then once we had her on the floor, squatting, it was all very quick.”

The rocker said: “I was massaging her back and after 10 minutes she let out this primal scream. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

Doctors managed to get the umbilical cord off Alastair Wallace’s neck in seconds.

Stewart, who has five other children, joked: “It was so skilful to watch, but I doubt he’ll ever wear a turtle neck again.”

When Lancaster’s waters broke, she remembered that she had wanted a plaster cast of her pregnant stomach, and went to an artist’s house instead of the hospital as advised.

“When we got there, the lady asked me when the baby was due and Rod and I were looking at each other, thinking we’d better not tell her the waters had already broken,” she said.

After the birth, she asked doctors to collect the blood from the umbilical cord so they could freeze it for stem cell research.

The pair joked to hospital staff that they would see them next year – to give birth to a second child.

Stewart proposed to his long-term girlfriend in March this year at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, and the couple are set to marry in the south of France.