Emma Bunton has recalled "lactating heavily" while on stage with the Spice Girls

Four months prior to the shows, the mother-of-two had given birth to son Beau, 13, and she recalled partner Jade Jones rushing to find her pads backstage to stop any more oozing out.

In an excerpt from her 'Mama You Got This' tome obtained by The Sun newspaper, Emma - who also has 10-year-old Tate with the former Damager star -wrote: “I have memories of lactating quite heavily during one of my first performances on that tour, at the STAPLES Center in LA.

“Our costumes had been designed by Roberto Cavalli, who Victoria knew, and oh my goodness they were beautiful.

“But stage costumes are different to evening wear. These were heavy, highly structured pieces (they had to withstand quite a lot of

activity!) and there were frequent changes.

“I remember it happened during 'Say You’ll Be There' – I was wearing a rose-gold dress with an empire line and a high neck, with gold lamé that was quite close-fitting over my boobs.

“I had to get through a whole other track, 'Headlines', just hoping nothing was showing.

“As it ended I came running off stage screaming at Jade, ‘Babes, get the pads! Get the pads!’

“Luckily, as it turns out, gold lamé isn’t very porous and most of the milk had just drizzled down my stomach. But anyone looking close enough would definitely have been able to spot wet patches on my boobs during that number."

The 'What Took You So Long' singer laughed it off at the time, but, in hindsight, she feels she wasn't ready for the "demanding regime" of performing and touring so soon after giving birth.

The 45-year-old star continued: “I can look back and smile about it now, but when I look at the pictures I also see a woman who really wasn’t ready to be throwing herself into that kind of physically demanding regime.

"I simply hadn’t understood the huge processes that my body would be going through after birth and, in particular, how breastfeeding would require so much energy.

“They say it burns around 300 calories a day, which I’m sure it does, because it takes a lot of power and strength to keep producing all that nutritious milk.

“To try to combine that with an energetic stage tour and sleepless nights was, with the benefit of hindsight, not a great idea. There were a lot of tears and a fair amount of self-recrimination.”