Tori Spelling had planned the perfect evening. While her husband Dean McDermott bunked with son Liam, 5, for a boys-only sleepover in May, the 20-weeks-pregnant star and her older daughter Stella, 4, were having a slumber party of their own. “We were really excited for girl time,” says Tori, also mum to one-year-old Hattie. But the fun was short-lived.

“I woke up at 6am and there was blood streaming down my legs,” the 39-year-old recalls. Dean, 45, rushed his wife to LA’s Cedars-Sinai medical centre, where they received a scary explanation for the bleeding episodes that had plagued Tori – she had placenta praevia, a condition in which the placenta covers the cervix. It was likely caused by scarring from Tori’s three C-sections, further complicated by conceiving the baby just one month after giving birth to Hattie. Now Tori was at risk of having a massive bleed that could force doctors to terminate the pregnancy and remove her entire uterus in an attempt to save her life.

“It was surreal,” says Tori, who was forced to spend the next two-and-a-half months lying flat on her back in hospital. “I just remember thinking, ‘I can’t leave three children behind’. Fortunately, her baby boy Finn Davey McDermott was born safely on August 30. She shares her journey exclusively with Woman’s Day.

When did you realise something was wrong?
The first bleed happened at eight weeks. My heart dropped. I started screaming for Dean and told him I’d had a miscarriage, but the next day I went to the hospital and the doctor said everything was fine. Right after that, I went to Utah to film a Christmas movie and I had to do all these dance routines. I had bleeding the entire time, but the doctor said the baby was totally developed… When I had the episode with Stella, that’s when doctors told me my life was in danger and that I’d have to stay in the hospital until the end of my pregnancy and then maybe have a hysterectomy afterwards.

Read more about Tori's miracle birth in this week's Woman’s Day on sale Monday October 22, 2012.