You think getting pregnant’s easy until it doesn’t happen – I urge aspiring parents to follow my advice, says Alex Jones
TV favourite Alex Jones admits she was “naive” about fertility issues but later became “obsessed” with having children.
The 45-year-old and her husband Charlie Thomson are parents to Teddy, five, Kit, three and one-year-old Annie.
But Alex, best known as co-host of BBC’s The One Show, suffered pregnancy difficulties in the past — including a miscarriage in 2017 — and did not have her first child until she was 39.
She says: “For all of us who’ve wanted a child, you’re brought up through your twenties to, ‘don’t get pregnant, don’t get pregnant, don’t get pregnant’.
“And then suddenly one day you sort of decide that I now want to have a baby, and it completely flips 360 degrees. Then you become obsessed by it.
“It’s difficult when it happens naturally, and it can take a while. But this is a whole new and different level of wanting — the disappointment and what it does to you as a couple.
“But I was really naive. I hadn’t thought about it. I thought, ‘well, there you are. We’ll try to have a baby and that’ll be lovely, and then a baby will arrive’. And, of course . . . how naive. You don’t have any control over it.
“I admire lots of women. I think it’s becoming more and more common that they are going out on their own and thinking, ‘well, I’m going to have a baby anyway’. And I think it’s incredible.”
Around 3.5million people in the UK suffer from fertility problems.
So Alex urges women to take the leap and try to get pregnant early, if they have made the decision to start a family.
She says: “I would tell anybody that if you’re in a relationship and you know you want kids, go for your life as soon as you can.
“But it’s not always that straightforward, is it? I think sometimes it’s not in your control.”
Next year viewers will see her in BBC show Alex Jones: Making Babies, for which she trained as a fertility assistant at King’s Fertility Clinic in London.
But she says if she had been forced to endure what some of her patients on the show did, including rounds of IVF with many of them giving up hope of having children, her relationship with Charlie would have suffered.
She explains: “Christ, me and Charlie would be at each other’s throats if we went through that and we are pretty rock solid.
“But it does stuff to you, doesn’t it? It’s so super-stressful.
“You do wonder, ‘God, what would it do to a relationship?’ It’s all those different things, isn’t it?”
In 2016 Alex fronted BBC show Fertility And Me after meeting Charlie in her mid-thirties and not feeling ready until then to become a parent.
Alex says Christmas is a great time to be a mum, adding: “To watch them in nativity is everything.
“We decorated the Christmas tree at the end of November and we really go for it.
“With little children, it’s ideal and I want to hold on to these Christmases while the children are still little and still believe.
“My husband is exactly like me, he’s a little Christmas elf.
‘Charlie is like me, he’s a little Christmas elf’
“We’ve started lots of traditions with the children.
“We do a home-made Advent calendar which, oh, my goodness, is a lot of work.
“We always go to the same place to get our tree.
“Christmas is the reason I had children, to watch them in the nativity and all of this. It’s the best time of year.”
And it has made her think about extending the brood.
She adds: “If I had a von Trapp family, I’d be delighted. It would be mad but it would be lovely to have a little gang.”
The von Trapp family singing group were the inspiration for the film The Sound Of Music.
Whether or not her kids go into showbusiness, Alex is delighted that people with fertility issues are now being represented on TV.
She says: “I just thought fertility problems in general hadn’t been really represented on TV.
“One in seven couples in the UK will have fertility complications, which is a hell of a lot of people to be not represented, or feel like they are not seen.
“This is an amazing opportunity for people who might be in the middle of IVF or those who might be going into it, because lots of people say, ‘Oh, we’re struggling a bit to have a baby,’ and somebody will tell them, ‘Well, just do IVF’. That is the worst thing you can say.”
Despite all of her achievements, Alex says being a mum is “by far the thing I am most proud of”.
She adds: “I’m not an amazing mother all the time.
“I get things wrong. I question myself.
“I adore those children, like everybody adores their children, and it means everything.”
- Alex spoke to Fab Daily at the TRIC Awards for TV and radio.
