Proud parents: Dannii, Kris and baby Ethan this yearIn the summer of 2008 I was on holiday in Ibiza with my friend, the model Benjamin Hart. One evening in Space nightclub, not necessarily a place where you expect to meet the love of your life, I saw an absolutely gorgeous guy dancing nearby and looking at us.
'Wow!' I said to Benjamin as we danced. 'Do you think he dances at my end of the ballroom or yours?'
'Hard to say,' Benji said. After another five minutes of tirelessly shaking my stuff to the best of my ability, I still had no idea if the handsome man was checking out my legs or Benji's arms. Benjamin beckoned him across, and I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.
The mystery man and Benji had a conversation a few yards away from me. After a minute or so, Benji brought Mr Handsome over.
'Dannii, this is Kris. Kris, this is Dannii.'
With a wink, Benji leaned over and said: 'All yours, love.'
Once the two of us got chatting, it transpired that Kris hadn't wanted to be at the club at all that night.
'It's my birthday tomorrow,' he said with the strongest, sexiest Mancunian accent I've ever heard. 'I've got a whole big day planned so I didn't want to come out but my mates dragged me out.'
'We're going to go backstage for a while,' I said. 'I'd love you to come along with us.'
'OK,' he smiled. 'I'll just have to tell my mates that I'll see them later.'
What I didn't know was that Kris had absolutely no idea who I was until his mates teased him about it, or even when they told him: 'That's Dannii Minogue you're chatting up.'
He said: 'Who? Dannii Minogue, the singer? Is it?' It took a while before the penny finally dropped, and I found that even more charming.
'I wondered why all me mates were making rude gestures at me while I was talking to you,' he laughed.
Kris told me that he'd once been a professional rugby league player, for teams including Leeds Rhinos and London Broncos, but after a couple of injuries was now a sports development officer, coaching school kids in Manchester: not an actor or a celebrity but a teacher - how refreshingly normal that seemed.
When it was almost midnight, I don't know what came over me. 'Can I be the first person to kiss you on your birthday?' I asked. It was so forward and so 'not me' - but I had such a strong feeling about this guy.
'Absolutely,' he said. So, on the stroke of midnight, that handsome mystery man kissed me and, just like a nightclub Cinderella, I fell for him then and there.
We went from strength to strength and he came to spend Christmas 2008 with me in Melbourne. I had to stay there for five months, working on Australia's Got Talent. Kris was supposed to go back to his job in Manchester.
'I think you should stay in Australia with me,' I told him. 'I've got to be here for the next five or six months and I can't imagine being without you.' He felt the same way.
The happy family: Dannii and boyfriend Kris with baby Ethan at Heathrow Airport this weekIn November 2009, I discovered I was pregnant, and on July 5, 2010, at 6.39pm, our little boy, Ethan Edward Minogue Smith, came into the world weighing 8lb 3oz.
I was in Melbourne when my labour started, ten days early. I was fairly serene - it was everyone else who seemed to get into a flap.
When my waters broke after I'd ambitiously tried to cram myself into a pair of jeans, I called Kris, who was on his way out to play golf. He, in turn, called Mum.
My friend Ben was also at the house, and he and Mum were a hysterical double act during my labour, running around my kitchen, bumping into one another and saying: 'Right, what do we do?'
'We need snacks ... rice crackers!' Mum exclaimed. 'And lemons! I NEED LEMONS!'
She had been planning to make an energy-boosting drink for me, and she panicked when she couldn't lay her hands on any lemons. 'I'll go to the supermarket,' Ben said, charging out of the house and straight past the two fruit-bearing lemon trees on either side of the front door.
I'd wanted to have a home birth but unfortunately Ethan wasn't in the correct position for a smooth delivery so the following morning I was transferred to hospital.
I started to worry about all the work I'd left up in the air. I was supposed to be doing a last check through my autobiography; and, worse, I hadn't even started writing my column for Glamour magazine. It's just the way my brain works. I can't help it.
I asked Kris to call my manager, Melissa. 'I'll tell her you've gone into labour,' he said. 'Yes,' I said. 'But can you also tell her I need her to get me an extension on the delivery of my column? I haven't started it yet.'
Kris's mouth fell open. 'You did not just say that,' he said.
I finally had Ethan after 20 hours of excruciating labour but when I held him for the first time all the pain melted away. When your baby is first handed to you, you try to take in every feature - every finger and toe, and every eyelash. I remember thinking: 'I can't believe you've been in my tummy all this time and I'm finally getting to meet you.'
Kris and I were surprised to discover that our baby was a top topic on Twitter. Everybody seemed to heartily approve of the fact that we hadn't given him a quirky 'celeb-baby' name.
Dad reminded us of the time Kylie had taken him out for a coffee with Chris Martin from Coldplay, but Dad had no idea who he was.
'What's your daughter's name?' he'd asked Chris.
'Apple,' Chris told Dad, who, thinking he was joking, said: 'Oh really? And what's her middle name, Strudel?'
When Kylie came to visit, it was national news. I was breastfeeding in front of the TV when I heard: 'Coming up on tonight's six o'clock news, Auntie Kylie comes to visit baby Ethan!'
When Kylie did meet Ethan, it was love at first sight. She took him into her arms and hugged him, talking to him all the while.
Kylie remarked that Kris had finally brought the tall gene into the Minogue family. She was right: our child is going to be either the tallest-ever Minogue or the shortest-ever Smith.
Kylie also told me how proud she is of me, and having my sister tell me that never gets old.
Now, Kris and I can't get through a cup of tea without having to do some errand or other, or feed or change Ethan, or make dinner, or do all those everyday things that every new mum and dad has to do.
It's a whole new world for me. And a very happy one.
source :dailymail
