BBC newsreader Kate Silverton: “I felt like a failure as a woman”

BBC newsreader Kate Silverton has said she felt like she had failed as a woman after she struggled to conceive

The 50-year-old was talking to the Body Coach, Joe Wicks on his new podcast. She told Joe she knew she would struggle to have children, but that she did not know the extent of what it would take out of her, both emotionally and physically.

She revealed she lost an ovary at the age of 29 during surgery to remove a cyst.

The mother-of-two said she feared her husband, Mike Heron, would not want to marry her due to her fertility.

She said: “I almost thought, ‘will he want to marry me still?’ He turned to me and said: ‘Look, we all have stuff where our bodies don’t work as well, look at me, I’m going bald.”

Kate told Joe she met her husband at 35 and up to that point was a bit of a commitment-phobe.

She said she regretted not trying for children earlier and explains she ‘fannied around for ages’.

Kate said they had made peace with the fact that they may not have children but said it was a very intense time seeing her colleagues fall pregnant.

The couple went through four unsuccessful rounds of IVF and then Kate fell pregnant naturally, something she calls a miracle.

She said: “We tried so hard and to then have the miracle of them, there’s not a day that goes past that I don’t give thanks for them, because it was so incredible to fall pregnant with them at 41 and 43.”

The couple have Clemency, now aged nine and seven-year-old, Wilbur.

To listen to the full podcast available on BBC iPlayer, click here.