Alex Jones shares impact of fertility issues: 'You become obsessed by it'
TV presenter Alex Jones has revealed that she was “naive” about getting pregnant and subsequently became “obsessed” with having kids.
The One Show presenter, now 45, was 39 years old when she had her first child, Teddy, now five, and 44 by the time she had her third child Annie, who is now one.
Jones and her husband Charlie Thomson are also parents to Kit, three, but she said that her fertility journey wasn’t straightforward.
“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’,” she told The Sun.
“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.
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“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.”
Jones added that when it came to getting pregnant, that she was “naive” and “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,” she continued.
“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.”
When it comes to advice for other couples hoping to have a baby, Jones, who had a miscarriage in 2017, said to start trying “as soon as possible”.
“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,” she added.
“But it’s not always that straightforward, is it? I think sometimes it’s not in your control.”
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Jones presented a BBC show in 2016 called Fertility And Me, after she met her husband in her mid-thirties and began trying for a baby, but it took longer than expected.
She is set to host a new show in 2023 called Alex Jones: Making Babies, for which she trained as a fertility assistant at King’s Fertility Clinic in London.
She added that she thinks her and her husband’s relationship would have “suffered” if they had undergone IVF like some of the couples on the new show.
“Christ, me and Charlie would be at each other’s throats if we went through that and we are pretty rock solid,” she said.
“But it does stuff to you, doesn’t it? It’s so super-stressful.”
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According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), infertility affects one in seven heterosexual couples in the UK.
It says the main causes are classed as 'unexplained infertility' in males or females (25%), ovulatory disorders (25%), tubal damage (20%), factors in the male causing infertility (30%), and uterine or peritoneal disorders (10%).
In two-fifths of the cases, disorders are found in both the man and the woman. It adds that there has been a small increase in the prevalence of fertility problems since its original guidelines were published in 2004.
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