Reality star Montana Brown has said she was shocked when she struggled to conceive her first child even though she was in her twenties.
The former Love Island contestant (27), who welcomed son Jude last month, said she thought she would find it easy to fall pregnant when she first started trying with fiance Mark O’Connor.
She told Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast: “I thought ‘we’re young, this is going to be really easy’ …. for the first four months we’d used ovulation sticks, and then I’d do a pregnancy test and it’d be negative. And I’d be like ‘oh my god that is so hurtful’ and then you do that month after month.
“Then I was kind over-thinking, is there something wrong with me, should I be getting checked?
“Naturally I sent Mark off to the clinic, I said ‘there’s something wrong with your sperm! You need to get it checked out, it’s not me!’
“But, actually, we both went to the clinic and everything was fine.
“So, Mark loves going in the sauna and also he’s an avid cycler, two things which are not good for sperm, which I did not know.
“I also found out I had no oestrogen and no testosterone. It kind of left me a bit like, ‘Oh, I can be young, fit and healthy, and still really really struggle to conceive’.”
Brown said as a result she was shocked when she did find out she was pregnant, blaming her symptoms of tiredness, nausea and hot sweats on food poisoning instead.
She said: “For some reason, like clockwork, in the evenings, I was having hot sweats. I had stabbing pains. And I was being sick every night.
“I said to Mark, ‘I’ve got food poisoning’. And he was like, ‘I don’t think you do’, he was like ‘you’re definitely pregnant’.
“I said, ‘Mark, please, come on, we had sex that one time’. I was like, ‘this is not happening, there’s no way’.
“So, I really avoided taking a pregnancy test. I genuinely was so convinced I was just ill.
“I remember Mark FaceTiming me saying ‘I have ordered you a pregnancy test to the house on Deliveroo’.”
She continued: “So, I was on FaceTime to him and I was like, ‘Fine. I’ll take the stupid pregnancy test just to shut you up’.
“I just remember weeing on the stick and just being like, ‘Yeah, it’s not loaded yet’. Just kind of a bit like blase. And then I just remember seeing it and I was like, ‘Oh, my God’.
“He was like, ‘No, you’re joking.’ I was like ‘I’m not joking, it says pregnant!'”
Brown and O’Connor welcomed their baby boy on June 23.
Sharing the news on Instagram, she wrote: “Welcome to the world Jude Isaiah O’Connor we’re so smitten with you little man. 23.06.23.”
Download Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast every Tuesday at 6am from acast.com
