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She has wrestled sheep on windswept hillsides and raised nine children in one of Britain’s remotest corners.
And Amanda Owen has now revealed she didn’t even bother calling for an ambulance when going into labour with her eighth child – as she ‘could not be arsed’.
Instead, the Yorkshire Shepherdess gave birth at home surrounded by cushions, a rug and a terrier.
Owen, 51, said daughter Clemmy was born on the floor of her farmhouse after she failed to go to the hospital – a 69-mile journey from the family’s Yorkshire Dales home.
Speaking on the White Wine Question Time podcast, she said: ‘Right here, this is where Clemmy was born.
‘A few cushions and a rug and a terrier over there under the settle. Best birth partner ever. I put my hand down, when I felt there was a head coming, I knew it was all systems go.’
Amanda Owenhas now revealed she didn’t even bother calling for an ambulance when going into labour with her eighth child – as she ‘could not be arsed’
Owen said daughter Clemmy was born on the floor of her farmhouse after she failed to go to the hospital – a 69-mile journey from the family’s Yorkshire Dales home
She admitted that repeated attempts to reach the hospital during earlier labours had become increasingly pointless.
‘I was frequenting all the lay-bys of the North East,’ she added. ‘The hospital would get further and further away.’
And rather than any grand rejection of medical intervention, the decision came down to sheer exhaustion.
‘It is literally the fact that I could not be arsed,’ she revealed. ‘I could not be bothered to set off the whole thing of ring the labour ward, ring for an ambulance, paramedics turn up. I just wanted to go back to bed.’
It comes after Owen told the Daily Mail last month she suffered from an eating disorder after splitting from her husband of 22 years.
She and Clive Owen, 70, went their separate ways in June 2022 after becoming household names on Channel 5’s Our Yorkshire Farm.
But Owen has said the two remain close.
They also still co-parent and work the farm together, although they no longer share the same home, with Amanda living in their nearby cottage and the children – aged nine to 22 (only 24-year-old Raven having flown the nest) – shuttling between them as they choose.
She admitted that repeated attempts to reach the hospital during earlier labours had become increasingly pointless
It comes after Owen told the Daily Mail last month she suffered from an eating disorder after splitting from Clive Owen (pictured), her husband of 22 years
But if it seems they have now achieved a comfortable equanimity as a family and former couple, for Owen, the past few years have been especially tough after struggling with an eating disorder.
It was part of a ‘cataclysmic’ breakdown she endured after she began a short-lived new relationship with web designer Rob Davies, 72, which ended when intense media interest became overwhelming.
‘I just shut down,’ she says. ‘Physical and mental health are intertwined and anxiety, depression, paranoia, agoraphobia and an eating disorder were all smooshed into one.
‘I remember sitting in the sheep pens in the dark, just hiding. It’s the price you pay for living your life in the open, for being observed.
‘It’s like having a post mortem before you’re dead.’
Our Yorkshire FarmAmanda Owen
