Kate: 'I felt such a failure'

When she celebrated the birth of her first baby, she hailed the joys of natural childbirth.

But now, four years on, Kate Winslet has admitted she lied - her daughter Mia was delivered by emergency Caesarean section.

The actress said she wanted to have her naturally and only lied because she believed she was a 'failure' for not being able to do so.

The extraordinary admission came weeks after Miss Winslet gave birth to her second child - this time naturally.

In a candid interview, the 28-year-old Titanic star said she was devastated to learn she needed emergency surgery to have Mia, whose father is her first husband, director Jim Threapleton.

However, after giving birth naturally to son Joe 11 weeks ago, she now felt 'triumphant' and able to 'lay all the ghosts to rest'.

She told the U.S. magazine Gotham: 'I've never talked about this - I've gone to great pains to cover it up. But Mia was an emergency C-section.

'I just said that I had a natural birth because I was so completely traumatised by the fact that I hadn't given birth. I felt like a complete failure.'

Shortly after Mia was born in London in October 2000, Miss Winslet said the child was 'born naturally and without complications'.

Joe was born in New York City to Miss Winslet and her second husband, film director Sam Mendes, just before Christmas.

'My whole life, I'd been told I had great child-bearing hips,' the British actress told the magazine.

'There's this thing amongst women that if you can handle childbirth you can handle anything. I had never handled childbirth-and I felt like in some way I couldn't enter the " powerful women's club".

'It was an amazing feeling having Joe naturally. Fourteen hours with no drugs at all, but then I had to have an epidural because I was so tired. It was an incredible birth. It was really triumphant.'

Last night, Mary Newburn, of the

National Childbirth Trust, said: 'No woman should ever feel a failure and it's terribly sad to hear that. The fact is, if she ended up having an emergency Caesarean section, then something wasn't right with the labour.

'Women who don't give birth the way they would want to either blame themselves or think that others will see it as a stigma.'

She added: 'We do feel the number of Caesarean sections is too high.'

Of the annual 600,000 births in England and Wales, 22.3 per cent are carried out by Caesarean section. Of these, 63 per cent are emergencies.

Miss Winslet said she was happier now than

ever - even though life had not turned out as she expected.

She said: 'When I was younger, I definitely had an image of what my life was going to be like. I was going to get married, have four children, live in England. I had all these plans and look at me now - I'm 28, on my second marriage, my children both have different dads.

'My life couldn't be more different than what I thought. But I couldn't be happier with the way it is.'