Chloe Madeley has bravely opened up on her ‘fearful’ two year battle to conceive.
The 34-year-old personal trainer excitedly announced last month that she and husband James Haskell are expecting their first child, a baby girl, later this year.
Chloe, the daughter of TV icons Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan, said she first realised she wanted to start a family with James when the former rugby player was in the Australian jungle, taking part in the 2019 series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
But their path to parenthood wasn’t straightforward.
In a new interview with OK! magazine, Chloe spoke about her fertility struggles, and said it was “really complicated”.
She said they hadn’t been using contraception “for months”, and began to get worried early last year when she still wasn’t pregnant.
“We picked up the pace in terms of trying and that nervousness turned into utter fear. Like, ‘Hang on, I don’t want this option taken away from me,’” she explained.
“I woke up in the middle of the night and it hit me like a ton of bricks. And that pushed me into making a decision and that I absolutely wanted to have a family,” Chloe added.
She revealed they visited a fertility clinic, and Chloe was given the all-clear by doctors, but she began to become worried when she still wasn’t pregnant after months of trying.
“I was getting to grips with the fact it might have to happen like that for me,” Chloe shared, as she said her and James were looking at IVF as an option, or adoption.
While she understands she’s “very lucky” to fall pregnant with the extra support, she said it was a “really sad few months” where she was “scared” becoming a mother was out of reach.
Looking back on her journey to conceive, Chloe said she’s disappointed she became overwhelmed with the “fear and pressure” of falling pregnant, and is “a bit upset”.
“Whenever I saw other people get pregnant, it reinforced that feeling of fear and sadness that didn’t seem to be happening for me,” Chloe confused.
She said she almost put a “trigger warning” on her own pregnancy announcement on social media, because she “didn’t want to spark any feelings of sadness [for other people]”.
Two days after her dad Richard made an unexpected exit from the Welsh castle in last year’s I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, Chloe discovered she was pregnant.
“I remember going to the gym and I thought, ‘It’s so weird I’ve had all these premenstrual symptoms for about a month. I should probably get a pregnancy test.’ I didn’t think it would be positive but it showed up pretty much immediately,” she recalled.
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