It’s a worry most mums and mums-to-be can relate to – what if they find someone better than me to do my job while I’m on maternity leave?
And it was a fear that The One Show’s Alex Jones said made her “paranoid” while she was away from her presenting role after the birth of her baby.
Speaking to the Mirror, first-time-mum Alex, 40, said taking time out to have baby Teddy left her worrying if she would have a job to go back to after her leave was up.
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“As much as I was really excited about having a baby, I was worried about going on maternity, because I love and respect my job and know it’s one a lot of other people would like to do,” the star admitted, adding that she didn’t even tune in to the show while she was off.
“But the BBC and my editor are brilliant and made me feel at ease, so it was just my paranoia,” she told the paper.
Alex added that her colleague Matt Baker kept her up to date on what was going on and visited her frequently.
Alex also told the paper that she was a bit “naive” about how much time she would take off after Teddy’s January birth – eventually heading back into the studio in the April.
“It would have been nice to have six months off, but I was a bit naïve,” she said.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, I’ll be back in three months,’ and obviously it’s not as easy as that and I wasn’t ready,” she said.
“So we started off with just two days. When you have a baby in your late 30s-early 40s, you’re at the peak of your career, so taking time off is hard.”
Alex has spoken out previously about how with hindsight, she perhaps went back to work too soon, telling The Sun earlier this month that she felt “absolutely sick” the night before she was due to return.
“With hindsight it would have been better to have taken longer off, but of course you don’t know that before you go,” she said.
“You make all these plans and when you’re still at work you say, ‘Yeah, it’ll be fine, I’ll be fine to come back after three months’.
“I felt fine in myself, but I didn’t feel ready to be separated from Teddy.”
Alex and her husband Charlie – whom she married at Cardiff Castle in December, 2015 – revealed they were having a baby in a Twitter announcement last September, writing: “Charlie & I are very happy to confirm that we’re expecting a baby in the new year. Feel so lucky that we’re about to become parents.”
And then when little Edward arrived, Alex shared the happy news in a phone call to The One Show, telling Matt Baker and Angela Scanlon: “I do have some news – our beautiful, healthy little baby boy was born!”
She then revealed that her son was born on Saturday, January 21st, weighing in at 7lbs 11oz.
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The proud mum later uploaded an adorable pic of her baby’s fingers to Instagram, gushing ‘My new obsession. #soinlovewithhim’.
Alex’s baby journey came as a particular blessing to the star, as she had previously revealed she worried she had left it too late to start a family, particularly as her own mother endured an early menopause at 43.