Kate Silverton on grieving for the children she never thought she’d have

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Kate Silverton has revealed that it was on her wedding day that she finally came to terms with the fact she would never be a biological mum.

After losing an ovary during an operation to remove a cyst at the age of 29, Silverton had been told that she was unlikely to get pregnant naturally.

Speaking on White Wine Question Time, she told host Kate Thornton that by the time she got married to husband, former Royal Marine Mike Heron, she had dealt with the potential loss.

Read: Kate Silverton recreates wedding photo after lockdown weight loss

“On our wedding day, we had come to terms with not being able to have children,” she said.

“I wept. I grieved the loss, but we did get to the point where we're like, ‘OK, you know, we're going to have children in some way.’ I always wanted children in my life, I wanted to just be a mum.”

Watch: Kate Silverton on her struggle to conceive children

The BBC newsreader had been unsuccessful with IVF and had accepted that she and her husband would probably adopt when she discovered, at 41, just shortly after her wedding day, that she had conceived naturally.

She said: “I sat in the makeup chair at work, but my lovely makeup lady Jenny – I said I felt so bloated – she just looked at me, and she said, ‘Do you think…?’ and it was like almost like a dagger to the heart. I'd had so many negative pregnancy tests.”

Silverton took a pregnancy test in the toilets at her gym and said that while the whole positive test was ‘insane’, nothing prepared her for falling pregnant again at 43, with her son Wilbur.

“I fell pregnant another two times afterwards,” she told Thornton.

“I sadly miscarried, but suddenly I was Miss Fertile. I'm like, ‘What the hell's going on? I'm just literally falling pregnant at a drop of a hat’.

Listen: Kate Silverton talks about how her hopes for a kinder post-pandemic life on the latest episode of White Wine Question Time

“And then the fourth time… I thought, ‘Well, I'll give it another go.’ I did a little fertility strip, Mike had a nice night, and that was one night! I knew. I just knew I’d be pregnant. I knew it'd be a boy!”

The 50-year-old broadcaster says she believes having therapy really helped her as she felt ‘very centred’ but she advises other women not to wait until as late as she did.

“I do say, please don't always just follow my lead, because I'd rather you know, at 35, people start thinking about it earlier,” she said.

Read: Why it's time to stop childcare shaming working mums like Kate Silverton

She continued: “But if you are in that position, there's a lot you can do now. There's a lot of stuff that I think we know now, and I do think that whole getting your mind and body aligned as one is really something really helpful. I advocate therapy, whatever it is that makes you feel more centred, because I know how stressful it can be.”

Silverton, who has just written her first parenting book entitled There’s No Such Thing As Naughty, is now training to become a children’s counsellor. She hopes her book helps parents of young children as she now understands first-hand how tricky parenting is!

“Suddenly, I was at this miraculous thing of falling pregnant naturally in my 40s and, and then there was a surge of like, ‘Wow, no one actually tells you how hard it is!’,” she laughed.

Buy it: There's No Such Thing As Naughty by Kate Silverton | £11.58 from Amazon

“My husband's like, ‘Jesus getting my green beret was easier than this. At least when I when I got it, and then I knew that it was over there. This is operation relentless!’ I wish we were really able to be more honest about parenting!”

Hear Kate Silverton talk about why she’s decided to become a counsellor on the latest episode of White Wine Question Time. Listen now on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Watch: Kate Silverton on why you should never leave a baby to cry it out