KATE Ferdinand says her three stepkids have told her not to worry if she mistakenly calls herself Mum instead of Kate.
However, her two-year old son Cree often calls her Kate rather than Mummy.
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She married ex-England footballer Rio Ferdinand after they got together in 2019 and became stepmums to Lorenz (age 16), Tate (14) and Tia (12 years old).
Rebecca Ellison, his wife of 34 years, died in 2015 from breast cancer.
Kate told the Happy Place podcast: “Sometimes I’m ‘Mummy Kate’.
“But the other day I found myself going ‘come here to Mummy’, and Tia’s there and I go ‘oh sorry’.
“Tia said ‘Kate, it’s fine, I’m OK if you say mummy. You don’t have to say Mummy Kate. It doesn’t bother me’.”
Kate has revealed recently that she broke down in tears after her Mother’s Day celebrations with Rio, and her 3 step-children were not accompanied by a greeting card.
She replied: “I’m not a natural mother.”
“I think it was our first Mother’s Day – maybe I’d been living here about six months, something like that.
“And even though I wasn’t biologically a mom, I sort of felt that I’d assumed the mother role.”
When I moved from my home to the school to take them, and cook for them, I was able to feel like a mom.
Speaking to Rio – who also lost his own mother Janice in 2017 – on her Blended podcast, she continued: “I really thought I might get a card from you, and I didn’t get a card from you.
The kids had also lost their mother.
“I just cried my heart out in my bedroom.”
“And I then felt selfish wanting a gift card. I asked myself, ‘How can I even want one?’
Anyone who’s new in the situation may feel this way because it is a strange one. ‘I was not a biological child so how could that be?’
“But I felt like a mum.”
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