Anna Williamson: ‘I had so much anxiety and uncertainty around my fertility’

TV presenter Anna Williamson always wanted to have kids but found herself “unexpectedly single” in her early 30s – and looked into egg freezing.

As luck would have it, she met her husband-to-be and got pregnant naturally before she could freeze any eggs, but went on to have fertility tests after her first child was born, in the hope that they wouldn’t struggle to have another.

“Fertility is something I explored,” explains the now mother-of-two, who suffered perinatal anxiety and postnatal depression during and after her first pregnancy. “I wanted to feel more in control of my fertility choices, understanding where I was when it came to my fertility.”

“I was an older mum when I got pregnant,” she says (she’s now 44), “and I’ve had several fertility tests as a bit of a fertility MoT.

“I hadn’t realised how much anxiety and uncertainty I felt around my fertility because the headlines about it when you get older just scaremonger. I was also carrying around a worry that with the vaginal birth I had, which was a forceps delivery and quite traumatic, if I’d sustained any internal damage.

“And guess what? I was so, so delighted to hear that for my age, I was over average in the eggs I was producing, and they said I’d healed beautifully inside.”

Three years after having their son Vincenzo, the Celebs Go Dating presenter and her husband, fitness trainer Alex Di Pasquale, had their daughter Eleanora. She says the fertility tests enabled her to put more time between having her children.

“I thought I might want another baby, but I definitely wasn’t ready, from a mental and physical perspective,” she says. “But I was very aware that I was getting pressure from society, from people’s ill-thought-out comments like, ‘When are you having the next one?’ or, ‘Best not leave it too long’.”

Williamson, who is also  a trained relationship counsellor, psychotherapist, life coach and author, describes the test results confirming her fertility was good as “reassuring”, and says: “I genuinely felt the pressure came off me, and we then waited a little bit longer than possibly we would have done if we’d gone with the scaremongering. And I’m delighted to say that six, seven months after trying, I fell pregnant again with my second.”

And her fertility testing didn’t stop there – she had more investigations when she was 41 in case she wanted to have a third child, and learned her fertility was “still very, very good. And that was really reassuring too, because it felt that I was in control of my choices,” she says.

Knowing the facts about her own fertility has proved so valuable to Williamson, that she’s teamed up with fertility companies FutureLife and CooperSurgical for the Let’s Talk Fertility campaign to debunk myths and tackle the stigma associated with talking about fertility.

New research for the campaign found 56% of UK adults feel fertility is rarely talked about unless there’s a problem, and more than a third (35%) agree fertility is an uncomfortable subject to discuss because of lack of education.

“Essentially, we need to talk more about fertility,” says Williamson, who also presents the LuAnna podcast, described as ‘rants, chats and bants on the topical stories of the week’ with her friend Luisa Zissman.

“Whenever I’ve talked about fertility tests, it’s astonished me the amount of women, in particular, that have said they didn’t know you could do such a thing.

“I think people assume you only look into fertility help, or even educate ourselves on it, when there’s an issue. But I’m a huge believer that prevention and early intervention is always better than risking it until the time comes when it can become even more challenging.

“I would always say to women, don’t leave it too late if having kids is even vaguely possibly part of your plan in life,” she says. “By having checks and looking at your options as early as possible, it gives you a starting point to feel like you’re in a position to have a choice. And I think having a choice is one of the most empowering things we can have.”

“I think being a parent is probably one of the most challenging but most rewarding jobs we can do, and I don’t think we should ever underestimate the importance of being a parent.

“I think we just need to be good enough – there is no such thing as a perfect parent. I sure as hell am not, but I care about my kids. I care about their wellbeing. I care about my family.

“And yeah, there are some days when I think ‘Christ, this is just too hard’. But then there are other days, like this morning, when your little one comes up to you, gives you a hug and says ‘I love you’, and you go ‘Maybe this is really good’.”

 Anna Williamson is an ambassador for the Let’s Talk Fertility campaign, in partnership with FutureLife and Cooper Surgical.