Sian Welby: This Morning host says 'had to hide pregnancy' fearing she would lose her job

Welby, 38, who welcomed her daughter Ruby in June last year with her fiancé and Heart Breakfast producer Jake Beckett, said she was already 20 weeks pregnant when she began co-hosting the show alongside Dermot O’Leary.

Speaking on Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, Welby admitted she was too afraid to disclose her pregnancy when offered her first This Morning cover. “When you first start a job, you think ‘Nobody knows what I'm actually like, that I'm trustworthy’ and you have to prove yourself,” she said. “I felt like I had proven myself, that I can do this and that. When I got that first This Morning cover with Dermot, I knew I was pregnant but I didn’t tell anyone.”

She said only close friends and family knew ahead of her 20-week scan. Even O’Leary and the wider This Morning team were unaware.

“In the back of my mind, I was thinking ‘If I tell them I'm pregnant, will this put them off getting me in again?’ And will they think ‘Oh she’s gonna be off for ages?’” she said. “I am sure so many women must feel in any job, especially if they are starting a new one, they must think ‘I have just got this new job and I can't tell them that I'm pregnant’.”

Welby added: “It’s the fear that you're going to be immediately judged or dropped or they'll go, ‘Oh why you didn’t tell us because that is really inconvenient for us now,’” she said. “You feel like that, you’re like, this is so natural and normal, why am I feeling so bad of it and so bad about it?”

She also recalled how difficult it was to hide her pregnancy, particularly during wardrobe fittings. “You can’t breathe in a baby bump,” she said, referring to a newspaper photoshoot while she was visibly showing.