Rochelle Humes talks family life with Marvin, date nights and the struggles of motherhood

ROCHELLE Humes knows all about the emotional roller coaster that is motherhood.

As soon as our vintage-inspired shoot finishes, the TV presenter gets ready to dash back to her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Alaia-Mai.

Earlier that morning, the youngster woke with a black eye after taking a tumble 24 hours before.

Cue the alarmed mum of one – married to ex-JLS star Marvin, 31 – hastily booking a hospital appointment to take her for a check-up.

“It’s the worst thing,” she says, full of apologies as she runs out the door.

“She went all quiet afterwards. I don’t know whether it’s just bad swelling, but I’d always rather check in case something has happened.”

When we meet up a week later for our interview at a private members’ club in London, the relief is written all over Rochelle’s face.

“I was so stressed that day! Everything was totally fine and it was just me being a massive… She’s my baby, you know?” she sighs.

“Alaia thinks that she’s a stunt woman, so we’ve had a few episodes. The next day she fell off her scooter and hurt her elbow. There’s no more watching her crawl and play with her toys any more – it’s all full throttle!”

And thanks to her daredevil toddler, Rochelle has had to get used to having her nerves tested to the limits at all times.

“It hurts me more than it hurts her. If I could wrap her up in cotton wool, leave her inside all day and only let her eat soup – so she can’t choke – then I think I would. Sadly that’s not life, though!”

Rochelle, 27, shakes her head laughing. The former Saturdays star is all too aware of how fast time goes.

Take for instance when her baby girl recently flew the nest into the big wide world of pre-school.

“I was a such mess outside. Marvin was like: ‘Stop crying, it’s embarrassing! We can’t be known as those parents.’ So I just pretended that my eyes were watering. I looked around at the other parents and no one else was like that.

“Alaia was fine when she went into the class and just went: ‘Bye, Mummy!’ But it breaks my heart how quickly she is growing up.”

However, overnight the sensitive mother hen transformed into a protective lioness when Alaia claimed no one wanted to play with her.

“It broke my heart and I thought I was going to be sick,” she says.

“I was like: ‘Oh, I’ve got to go down to the school, that’s it!’

“Then the next day she said: ‘I’ve got a best friend and we’re having a sleepover.’ It taught me that beforeI want to go marching in there all guns blazing, I have to put a sensible hat on first.

“You just want to protect them and put them in this bubble forever, but you can’t. You’re constantly learning on the job.”

Rochelle is certainly used to adapting quickly, after being thrust into the limelight at just 11 years old when she joined S Club Juniors.

She went on to be part of The Saturdays – along with Una Healy, 35, Mollie King, 29, Frankie Bridge, 27, and Vanessa White, 26 – and over their seven years together they racked up 13 Top 10 singles.

When the girl band announced their hiatus in 2014, Rochelle went on to forge a successful TV career, with prime-time ITV gigs including Ninja Warrior UK, a brief stint on The Xtra Factor and new show The Next Great Magician, where Rochelle and co-host Stephen Mulhern search for the best new magic-makers around the globe.

Hubby Marvin also has a lot on his plate with a weekday late-night slot at Capital Radio.

But Rochelle is adamant that their careers will always come a firm second to their home life.

“My family is my number one and then everything else follows suit. As long as family is first, then we juggle everything else. Alaia is always our priority.

“It’s easier now that she’s in pre-school and I try to keep my weekends free for her. I choose my work around her and as long as she’s happy, then that’s how it works. It’s all hands on deck sometimes, but that’s what it’s all about and I have a great team of people who I work with. It takes a village, right?”

Rochelle walks the walk where prioritising family life is concerned – unlike some showbiz couples, the Humes household is a strictly phone-free zone.

“We do all of our emails and stuff during the car journey back, as we live an hour outside of London. Then when we’re home, we’re home and that’s it.

“I never answer my phone and it’s kind of an unsaid rule not to. If I’m with Marvin and Alaia then I don’t really need to pick up my phone – I’ll
just call everyone back.

“When Marvin and I are on a date night, we keep our phones in our bags. If you’re out for dinner, enjoy it! I find it bizarre that you would pay for an expensive meal to just Snapchat through all of it.”

The couple got together in 2010, when Rochelle was just 21, after regularly bumping into each other on the showbiz circuit. After a brief split, they went on to marry in a lavish ceremony in 2012 before having their daughter Alaia the following year.

Now they’re considered to have one of the strongest celebrity unions, with weekly date nights to keep the spark alive in their four-year marriage.

No mean feat – and it’s all thanks to giving up the non-stop travelling that blighted the early years of their relationship.

“We spent the first few years constantly being apart, as we were both working. Marvin might have been in London and I would be in
America and vice versa.

“That’s all we knew, and when you’re young, carefree and without any responsibilities it’s completely different.

“But as soon as Alaia was born, we made a vow and said that wouldn’t happen. Now there are no weeks apart – we set a maximum of a few days if necessary. We feel we’ve put in the time when it comes to travelling.

“You make the pact work, even if it means driving home at 3am.”

So with all this extra time together, does that mean the couple are planning a second baby?

“I always think you can never plan these things, as the timing will never be right. At the minute I feel so blessed and happy with the way everything is that I’d never put pressure on that, but definitely in the future.”

But Rochelle is finding that a certain family member is piling on the pressure for her to expand her brood.

“I’m feeling it from Alaia, for sure!” she giggles.

“She’s already quizzing me and saying that her friends all have brothers or sisters.”

Rochelle’s experience of giving birth wasn’t exactly easy.

She had to have an emergency C section as Alaia was breech and the umbilical cord became wrapped around her neck.

But it hasn’t put her off going through it all again.

“I was lucky that I had an amazing doctor and it was over so quickly. It seems so long ago now and you forget the ordeal instantly. I think
that’s why people end up having so many kids!

“It could have gone another way, if I wasn’t so well looked after, so I was very fortunate.”

Rochelle says Marvin is a hands-on father and admits that, thanks to being outnumbered two to one, he feels like he has two wives.

“Alaia’s always going: ‘Daddy, where are you? What are you doing? Who are you with? What time will you be home? When are you going to do this?’” Rochelle laughs.

“Marvin says: ‘She grills me way more than you’ve ever grilled me!’ He’s now ruled by the two of us, bless him.”

As a devoted and very buff dad (we’ve seen that six-pack), Marvin sounds like ideal husband material.

So does Rochelle still wake up every morning, turn over and think: ‘Yep, I still fancy you’?

“Yeah, I guess so. Well, if there’s not a three year old waking me up first!”

Early wake-up calls notwithstanding, it’s clear that the couple lead a pretty idyllic life, after recently celebrating their fourth wedding anniversary in Ibiza. But what’s their secret?

“We do normal things as a normal family and couple. I think that’s the key – not to get caught up in the crazy showbiz world that we work in.

“People always say: ‘How do you find time [for date nights]?’ But you shouldn’t have to find time. It should always be something you make time for.

“We go out with our friends, have dinner and do the school run. At the same time, we have so much fun together. We’re still a young couple, so we like to have a good time.”

Being thrust into the spotlight at such a young age means Rochelle has had to grow up fast.

While she’s busy worrying about her own daughter’s rapid development, sometimes it’s easy to forget she’s only 27 years old.

“I know,” she smiles.

“It’s bizarre how young I was. I got married at 23 and I had Alaia at 24.

“If I heard my little sister [Emily, 23, a nurse] saying she was going to do that, I’d tell her: ‘You’re too young!’

“But I grew up so quickly. I was working from the age of 11. I think if I’d had Alaia and my phone didn’t go off for work because people weren’t interested, then I wouldn’t have been devastated.

“I had already lived a big old life and felt like I had ticked a few things off my bucket list.”

She also found her body confidence at a younger age than most.

“I just think everything in moderation. I’ve never been into diets and it can become an obsession for some people. At the end of the day, it’s food. I really enjoy going out for dinner and everything I do socially revolves around eating.

“What is life without stuff you enjoy? What are you doing it for at the end of the day? As long as you’re healthy, go for it and eat what you want.”

This attitude means that Rochelle refuses to follow the celebrity trend of doctoring her Instagram snaps to make herself look smaller.

“The pressure is unnecessary. It’s easy to think you have to look a certain way and I think that’s what happened with Instagram,” she says. “Obviously every girl wants to feel nice, but you can do that without having to diet.”

And Rochelle is hoping that by the time Alaia – who she refuses to fully show in any pictures until she’s old enough to make her own decision – reaches her teenage years, she’ll be free from any social media pressures.

“I didn’t have that pressure when I was growing up,” she says.

“I’m hoping that it’s going to go full circle by the time she turns 16, and they’ll not be interested in social media by then,” she says.

In the meantime, Rochelle plans to keep family as her main focus.

With her rock-solid relationship and a career that keeps going from strength to strength, this is one celeb who definitely doesn’t need a filter to make her life look good.

If you liked this, read how Una Foden keeps the spark alive in her marriage and why she doesn't want any more children.

The Next Great Magician starts October 6 2016, 7pm, ITV.