The daughter of late comedy legend John ‘Strop’ Cornell and actor Delvene Delaney has revealed how she lost her unborn child just three months before she was due to give birth.
Actress Liana Cornell, 34, shared the heartbreaking news – just months after she was told she’d never be able to have children – in a lengthy post on Instagram on Sunday.
She said she was forced to terminate her unborn daughter almost six months into her pregnancy after doctors detected serious complications and ‘deformities’.
‘Over a year and a half ago I was six months pregnant,’ she posted. ‘Single and pregnant – two things I never really imagined myself to be.’
The 34-year old admitted the traumatic loss of her first child took place during one of the worst years of her life after losing her father and splitting up with her lover.
‘My dad died, my fiancé and I broke up a week before our wedding, [and] I was diagnosed with a degenerative illness (which I’m now curing).
‘A close friend of mine committed suicide, my hometown had the worst floods on record, [and] family members almost died from random occurrences.
‘I couldn’t travel home due to everything happening in the world at the time, [and] Britannia had not been renewed.’
Liana Cornell (pictured) is best known for her role in historical fantasy drama Britannia between 2017 and 2019. She has also appeared in Wolf Creek and East of Everything
Her later father John Cornell is pictured with his wife Delvene Delaney in Sydney in 2006
The Byron Bay-raised star explained she fell pregnant the first time she was intimate with the child’s father, after a year of celibacy.
The miracle pregnancy came just one month after she had been told it would be impossible for her to ever have children of her own.
But the joy turned to heartbreak and then unspeakable tragedy within a matter of months.
‘Initially the father was excited, telling me he wanted to have endless babies with me,’ she said.
‘Telling me he’d never been so in love.. and then suddenly, he left, swiftly and coldly, without much reason.’
As she nursed her broken heart, she realised her unborn daughter, whom she named Nymphaea, had only moved once throughout her six-month pregnancy.
‘I went for an ultrasound [and] my world shattered once more,’ she wrote.
‘The baby had deformities. The circumstances were already against us but I thought we’d make it.’
Liana Cornell fell pregnant after a year of celibacy, and just a month after being told she was unable to get pregnant
The actress shared a photo of her growing bump to her Instagram
She explained the baby’s head was too big, heart too small and stomach engorged. On medical advice, she was forced to terminate her miracle pregnancy over two days in hospital.
‘After I lost the baby, I got postnatal depression really badly and didn’t realise,’ she wrote.
‘My hair started to fall out, my body stopped working.’
It was the beginning of a spiralling decline in her health, she revealed.
‘I had been bleeding for four months from places you weren’t meant to bleed from, nothing to do with baby, everything to do with this [unnamed] ‘disease’,’ she said.
Her health finally began to improve when she started seeing a new specialist, she said.
‘She immediately operated on me, and at the end of it, she gave me hope,’ she wrote. ‘She also has this rare disease and doesn’t think it’s such a death toll.’
Now, 18 months after the devastating loss of her child, Cornell says she is finally feeling ‘healed and ready’.
‘While I didn’t get to birth Nymphaea, I did get to birth myself,’ she wrote. ‘I am new, fresh, powerful in my truth, healed, ready.’
The actress was forced to terminate her pregnancy after six months due to deformities
John Cornell played Strop on The Paul Hogan Show (pictured with Hogan and co-star and wife Delvene Delaney)
Liana shared a childhood photo with her dad John ‘Strop’ Cornell
The actress is the goddaughter of iconic Australian actor Paul Hogan.
Her father John Cornell produced Crocodile Dundee, and was Hogan’s beloved dim-witted sidekick on his TV show in the 70s and 80s, co-starring with wife Delvene Delaney.
The couple married in 1977 and had two daughters, Liana and her sister Allira. Cornell later developed Parkinson’s disease and died at his Byron Bay home in July 2021 at the age of 80.
Liana graduated from NIDA in 2012. She’s best known for her role in historical fantasy drama Britannia between 2017 and 2019. Other credits include parts in Wolf Creek, Love Child and East of Everything.
Last year she snapped up a Northern Rivers retreat, a 6ha estate close to Mullumbimby, for $2million.
