Fearne on motherhood:
The TV presenter opens up about the highs and lows of being a mum – and the lessons she’s learned
“I felt invincible after giving birth”
Famed for being the bubbly F TV presenter who has graced our screens since her teens, Fearne Cotton bravely spoke out earlier this year about her battle with depression, and credited spending time with her family for helping her combat the harrowing disorder.
But sharing her experience of motherhood, the 36 year old – who has son Rex, four, and daughter Honey, two, with husband Jesse Wood and is also stepmum to his children Arthur, 15, and Lola, 12 – admits she took on too much after the birth of her second child and realised she needed to take better care of herself.
FEELING ALIENATED
She says, “When I gave birth to my daughter, Honey, I felt invincible and tried to do too much straight away. I just wanted to get back to normality and be cleaning and cooking for everyone.
“I sort of didn’t take as much good care of myself as I should. All those hormones that are creating these euphoric highs, they then make you feel like you’re on a downer. You’ve just got to talk to other mums about it and not feel alienated.”
Fearne says that being a stepmother helped prepare her for motherhood. “I feel quite lucky because I have two stepchildren; I never really had just one child in the house,” she admits. “I was always juggling kids. So the jump for me wasn’t from Rex to Honey, it was from stepchildren to having kids of my own. That was the discombobulating bit. But we just adjusted and got on with it.”
And she says that, with a manic work schedule as a presenter, columnist, designer and author, life at home can feel like a zoo.
“After the birth of my two kids, life just got even more mad at my house,” she laughs. “It was even more like a zoo. Messy and chaotic. But that’s the sort of beauty in it.”
BIRTH STORIES
And through it all, Fearne credits husband-of-three-years Jesse, 41, for his support, and says he was “brilliant” during her labour.
She reveals, “I’ve had two very different births. With Rex, I wasn’t progressing much so I ended up having an epidural and then it was a bog-standard experience. I still found the whole thing amazing, emotional and magical. But with Honey, I thought I’d give it a go without pain relief and tried hypnobirthing – which I loved.
“Jesse was really up for it. He made the lighting in the room a bit darker and he gave me a back massage. I was like, ‘Get out of my face, this is not the time!’ But he was brilliant and I think he felt he had more of a part in the second labour. It was magical.”
❛I DIDN’T TAKE AS GOOD CARE OF MYSELF AS I SHOULD HAVE❜