Shorty star Ngahuia 'WE'RE HAVING ANOTHER GIRL!'

The talented actor is looking forward to welcoming baby number four

- Fleur Guthrie

All the teeny baby clothes had finally been given away. As had the well-used cot and car capsule. Shortland Street actor Ngahuia Piripi, 35, and her partner Teone Kahu, 32, were content at the thought that their blended family of six was complete.

But while using the contraceptive pill – and in the middle of discussing taking “final steps” to make sure they didn’t fall pregnant again – life had other plans for the West Auckland couple.

Today, as an upbeat Ngahuia is perched on a stool eating a packet of gummy lollies and patting her 25-week baby bump, she shares her initial feeling of ‘absolute shock’ to see two blue lines appearing on a pregnancy test.

“I remember saying to Teone, ‘Babe, I’m getting sore boobs and feeling a bit nauseous, and I don’t think the pill usually does that. So I’ll just take a pregnancy test to rule it out.’

“The test did not rule it out!” she laughs. “Teone probably thought, ‘I’m the man,’ but I cried. They were not happy tears originally, because I thought we had definitely finished growing our family.

“Yet here we are! And we’re looking at the positives and counting our blessings, like even being able to fall pregnant so easily, especially at my age. We are lucky.

“Like anything in life, you deal with the cards you are given.”

The stunning actor, who has starred as surgeon Esther Samuels for the past decade on the Kiwi soap, gave herself the first trimester to process everything privately.

“I was kind of in denial,” she admits. “Like, I’ll ignore it and carry on and if I don’t miscarry, then I’ll start paying attention.

“Once I got to the second trimester, I thought, ‘Okay this is really happening’ and I started to get my head around it. And once you can see your body changing, it hits a bit more too.