Alesha Dixon admits she’s ‘constantly at battle’ with the prospect of having more kids

Alesha Dixon has admitted she’s ‘constantly at battle’ with the prospect of growing her family. 

In this week’s edition of the Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, the Britain’s Got Talent judge, 41, who shares daughters Anaya, seven months, and six-year-old Azura, with partner Azuka Ononye, confessed she’s content with having two children, but experiences days when she thinks: ‘Why wouldn’t I want another baby?’ 

During the candid interview, the former Mis-Teeq star also touched on moving on from her ‘toxic’ past relationships, hiding her second pregnancy from her loved ones for six months, and loving her figure now more than ever before.

The media personality shared her thoughts on adding to her brood, revealing she hasn’t completely ruled the idea.

Alesha told host Giovanna Fletcher: ‘I have days when I say absolutely no way, two is great, this is manageable. Then I have other days where the joy and the love… 

‘That’s what you’re constantly at battle with because you think why wouldn’t I want another baby, they’re amazing and then another day where you’re like I’m going to pull my hair out and I’m going to go crazy, absolutely not, no way!’

Insisting she’s fallen ‘in love’ with breastfeeding her child, the TV star added: ‘I’ve had that feeling of am I never going to be pregnant again? Am I never going to breastfeed again? 

‘And that in itself is quite a sad feeling because I don’t want that to part to end in my life because it’s so beautiful then there’s the other voice that says, ‘Well you’ve experienced it in all its glory so just chill.” 

Alesha – who previously revealed she witnessed her mother being abused by her partner – admitted she had to overcome her traumatic childhood experiences in a bid to accept having her own family.

She detailed: ‘It took me many years to repair from some of the things that I saw you know right into adulthood to recover from the things and I thought I’m not going to do that to a child. 

‘I’d rather have had no children than bring them into the wrong environment.’ 

On having a ‘strong urge’ to become a mother, the honey-blonde beauty continued: ‘I mean Azuka tells me off a lot for using the word, “Oh time is running out”. 

‘I mean I guess I can say “That’s easy for a man to say” but I can see what he’s trying to say to me because we genuinely believe that the thoughts that you put out, you manifest.

‘So therefore if you say things like “Well I’m too old to have a baby” or “Time’s running out”, then that’s the anxiety that you’re putting out into the world so he was right and I guess women do naturally have a concern about time because we do have a body clock and I always say that to him, like “I’m not making it up!”‘

‘I got a strong urge. Yeah, strong. And it hit me sideways actually because I had been someone that resisted it before and then like you said, I was so focused on work that it didn’t take priority. 

‘There came a point when I was about 32/33 where I just started having an instinctive feeling and Azuka and I probably talked about it for a good year before we made the decision and this is why I love him because he’s really sensible.

‘We were trying to figure out how we could bring a child into our creative space but present for our children whilst still being ambitious and wanting to do the things that we want to do.

‘We talked and talked and talked until we couldn’t ignore the desire to do it and it was almost like and I touch wood, the day we decided we were going to do it, we pretty much fell pregnant straight away.’

The rapper went public with her other half in 2012, six years after ending her marriage to MC Harvey, who engaged in an affair with singer Javine Hylton during the course of their relationship.

On finding love with the dancer, Alesha said: ‘We met 10 years ago, and he was the first person that I’d met, that I knew that we could have children together because of our values, our morals, our thinking aligned.

‘Very much on the same page, same belief system. I trust him as a human being. I knew he would be an incredible Dad. 

‘That’s the moment that it felt right and I’d been in toxic relationships before where I knew that I could never bring a child into the relationship because having had those times in my life, as a child that were difficult, I knew I couldn’t possibly repeat that for my child. 

‘The thought of having children with someone who could so something toxic or show them something toxic that I saw as a child, frightened me more than anything in the world so it was so important for me that the person I had children with, the relationship had to healthy, their mind had to be healthy.’

The mother-of-two clarified why she refers to the Azuka as her ‘husband’, despite the couple not tying the knot yet. 

‘Everyone thinks that Azuka and I are married but we’re not married, I just call him my husband’, she said. ‘I call him myself husband because he is and to call him my boyfriend seems so juvenile.’ 

Alesha shocked the nation when she announced her pregnancy back in May during Britain’s Got Talent’s live shows.

The Greatest Dancer presenter – who described finding out she was expecting her second child as ‘the best feeling in the world’ – explained why she decided to keep both her pregnancies a secret for six months.

She said: ‘I think that at the time the thinking was, because Azuka and I had been together for a long time I hadn’t put it out and it wasn’t that we were hiding from any particular reason.

‘We were just enjoying being us. So, the first thing was, well no one even knows we’re in a relationship and now I’m pregnant… How are we going to get around this? We’ll just hide it.

‘I was doing Britain’s Got Talent but in my head at the time, because you know you overthink things but I don’t want to say “I’m pregnant” when people don’t even know I’m in a relationship and then distract from the show.

‘In my mind I was like let’s just finish the show so that it can have its moment without any pregnancy malarkey and then we can announce that we’re pregnant. And that’s pretty much what we did. 

‘The live show wrapped and I went down to Cornwall with my family, told all of them… my Nan was furious! And my cousin, they were actually furious. My Mum knew, Bernadette who works with me, she knew, and a close friend knew but yeah, I kept it quiet.’ 

On meeting her eldest child for the first time, Alesha admitted she was in a ‘hyper-emotional’ state, describing the start of motherhood ‘a complete mess’.

The doting parent shared: ‘It was the most surreal, out of body experience. Once I had Azura, the first 3 days that followed that were quite bad for me emotionally, I was a complete mess. 

‘It was like that fear came into the room and suddenly I was in floods of tears and I couldn’t sleep. 

‘Azuka didn’t know what to do with me I was literally, I was having an out of body experience and I know I was exhausted and I know there were so many other things going on but I remember the 3 days after her birth, it was quite a dark time for me, not in my relationship with her, but with how I was feeling. 

‘I was feeling so overwhelmed and scared and it was like how am I going to protect the most precious small pure being I’ve ever seen in my life?’ 

Anaya arrived a few weeks earlier than expected via a c-section, an experience Alesha recalled as ’emotionally draining’.

On returning to work just five weeks after giving birth, the host explained: ‘She came and I started a brand-new job [on America’s Got Talent]. Just normal stuff! 

‘The fact I was doing something that I was really excited about, that helped the recovery because there I was in LA, bright blue sky, with my family, doing a new job that I was excited to do. It was really nicely paced out, we’d work one day, we’d have two or three days off. 

‘It was on paper, the most ideal scenario so what might seem crazy to someone on paper, going back to work after 5 weeks, it was like I couldn’t think of a better way to do it. I couldn’t wait to go back to work it actually helped me because I was in a joyful space.’

Elsewhere in the discussion, the brave star also discussed embracing her post-baby figure, with Alesha insisting: ‘I like my body more now than I did when I was in my 20s. I said that to Azuka the other day.

‘Yes I’m going through that phase where all my hairs falling out, well not today because I’ve got loads of extensions in… but my hair’s falling out, boobies don’t look like how they used to look, I’ve still got my little kangaroo pouch going on but it’s ok! 

‘It’s fine! I had that before, and your hair grows back and everything bounces back you’ve just got to be healthy and look after yourself. So, I’ve just made peace with the process.’

Download Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast from acast.com