Emmerdale’s Lucy Pargeter has returned to work.
The 40-year-old actress – who is known for playing Chas Dingle in the long-running soap – has been on maternity leave for the past eight months while she gave birth to her twins Missy and Betsy but, now that the girls are five months old, she has agreed to reprise her role in the show and return to set to today (31.08.17) to work on storylines.
Taking to her Twitter account last night (31.08.17), she said: "Big day tomorrow my beautiful#twirls turn 5 months and I go back to work !! Huge mix of emotions I’m going to miss them so much #workingmum (sic)."
The brunette beauty has stayed out of limelight since welcoming the little ones into the world but admitted shortly after their birth that their delivery didn’t go according to plan.
She said at the time: "There was a moment when they weren’t breathing.
"They got handed over to the medical team straight away after they were born and they were manipulated to make sure their airways were clear.
"It was a planned Caesarean as the girls were both breech. I got to 37 weeks – which is when they usually want to take out twins.
"I wanted to watch the whole thing but they put a screen up when you’re having a C-section and it couldn’t be lowered quite enough for me to see.
"In some hospitals there are mirrors on the ceiling so you can see what’s going on, but that wasn’t the case in mine. I was gutted I didn’t get to watch them being born."
Last year Lucy – who also has 12-year-old daughter Lola with her partner Rudi Coleano – revealed she used to sneak off in her lunch break and give herself secret injections in a bid to increase her chances of falling pregnant.
She said: "If you go to your employer and say I’m having IVF, then of course they think well, ‘If it works, in nine months time, you’re going to be off.’
"So you don’t really want to give somebody the indication that you might be off in nine months because it affects storylines and everything."