Lioness Demi Stokes embodies strength and fitness as a professional footballer

but she was once a tiny 3lb baby having been born 10 weeks early.

“I was actually born down the toilet,”

reveals the Manchester City and England star, 30.

“So it was a bit a crazy entrance into the world.”

Like thousands of babies born prematurely every year in the UK

Stokes spent time on a neonatal unit before going home.

It’s only since becoming a parent herself that it’s really sunk in

how anxious a time that must have been for her own mum.

Stokes and her partner Katie Harrington have a six-month-old son, Harlen,

I can’t imagine what my mum was feeling [back then].