![\"Book](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/love-island-s-olivia-bowen-why-alex-and-i-won-t-have-any-more-children.jpg\")
(Blink\/PA)<\/p>\nTwo traumatic birthing experiences and the loss of a baby through Vanishing Twin Syndrome prompted Love Island\u2019s longest-lasting couple Olivia and Alex Bowen to make the decision not to have any more children.<\/p>\n
Olivia suffered complications with the birth of their second child, Siena, including a collapsed cervix and prolapsed bladder,\u00a0 and a major haemorrhage after a C-section, losing 2.8 litres of blood.<\/p>\n
So traumatic had the experience been for both of them, coupled with the loss of a twin through Vanishing Twin Syndrome, that Alex later had a vasectomy,\u00a0 Olivia told the Press Association.<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and Alex definitely won\u2019t be having any more kids,\u201d she says plainly. \u201cHe had a vasectomy because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some 10 years after appearing in Love Island, Olivia, 32, co-star of the six-part ITV2 reality series Olivia & Alex: Parenthood, charts the distressing experiences in her new book, Lost Until Love, a love letter to her younger self and a reflection on her life.<\/p>\n
In it she talks candidly about her experiences with anxiety, self-harm and the impact of losing a twin baby. She emphasises the importance of therapy, medication and exercise in her mental health journey.<\/p>\n
While she clearly adores her children, in the book she highlights the fact that not all birthing experiences are positive.<\/p>\n
Olivia suffered post-natal depression after her son, Abel, now four, was born not breathing following a 38-hour labour. Although he was only taken away for a couple of minutes while nurses worked to clear his airways, Olivia describes it as \u201cthe longest two minutes of my entire life\u201d.<\/p>\n
The couple also went through the trauma of Vanishing Twin Syndrome, where she was pregnant with twins until one died during early pregnancy, to be gradually absorbed by her body. Siena, their daughter, is the surviving twin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t process all the emotion, being so happy because we could see that one little baby thriving, and yet there was one next to it that wasn\u2019t alive,\u201d she writes in the book.<\/p>\n
(Blink\/PA)<\/p>\n
Today, she reflects: \u201cI just don\u2019t think I could ever deal with that again \u2013 I\u2019d be too scared \u2013 and we\u2019re so lucky to have two healthy children. We feel abundant with them both.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Alex really struggled with both births,\u201d she continues. \u201cIt was very traumatic for him to see me almost die in the second birth. The first birth was awful for him, with Abel not breathing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her mental health suffered after Abel was born, she acknowledges, as she made the transition to motherhood.<\/p>\n
She suffered post-natal depression and slipped back into self-harm, something she has found difficult to talk about until now.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ended up slipping back into depression, slipping back into old habits and I had to go back to therapy,\u201d she remembers.<\/p>\n
The decision for former scaffolder Alex, 34, now a fitness coach and DJ, to have a vasectomy was a joint one, she explains, and they had been talking about it when Olivia was pregnant with Siena, a decision cemented when she lost the other twin.<\/p>\n
After talking about her Vanishing Twin Syndrome experience on ITV\u2019s Loose Women last year, she received an overwhelming response from women who had gone through the same thing, she recalls. It helped spur her decision to write the book, a frank, open account of her experiences which she hopes will help others.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been through some things that I feel if I speak about them it would help alleviate shame and maybe gain some courage for other men and women to speak about their issues,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not that I think I\u2019m a guru and I\u2019ve got it all worked out, because I still don\u2019t \u2013 I still have really bad days. But I\u2019ve been through things like self-harming, disordered eating and I\u2019ve got this huge platform \u2013 so how many people could I help?\u201d<\/p>\n
Social media star Olivia, who has 2.9 million followers on Instagram alone and a string of collaborations, has also forged a path as a property developer and interior designer. She has been married to Alex, a fitness trainer, for eight years and the couple remain Love Island\u2019s longest-standing success story.<\/p>\n
![\"Reality](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783475597_824_love-island-s-olivia-bowen-why-alex-and-i-won-t-have-any-more-children.jpg\")
(Alamy\/PA)<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know we just want to be together forever,\u201d she beams. \u201cWe know we have to work at it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The couple are dividing their time between the UK and Spain, where their villa, a two-and-a-half year project, is now completed \u2013 but her wider family is keeping her from making the move to Spain permanent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the one crux that I just can\u2019t get over. It\u2019s a lovely way of life, but we\u2019ve found a school for Abel (in England) and we\u2019ve got family at home and I think it\u2019ll be nice if we can flit between the two.\u201d<\/p>\n
While her life now may seem Insta-idyllic, her early years were peppered with family disruption. Her parents divorced when she was 10 and she experienced intense sadness at school, depressive episodes which spiralled into anxiety, an unhealthy relationship with food, and self-harm, which has returned at stressful times in her life.<\/p>\n
She recalls burning her hands with lighters after she left Love Island and has had therapy at different times in her life.<\/p>\n
As a teenager, she fell in with the wrong crowd, partied hard and drank heavily, developing anxiety and with it an unhealthy relationship with food.<\/p>\n
She also fell into unhealthy relationships, both within herself and with others, enduring toxic relationships and emotional domestic abuse, barely able to hold down her job.<\/p>\n
Just when her boss was about to fire her, Olivia applied to be a contestant on Love Island \u2013 and the rest is history.<\/p>\n
![\"Olivia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783475597_191_love-island-s-olivia-bowen-why-alex-and-i-won-t-have-any-more-children.jpg\")
(James Rudland\/PA)<\/p>\n
Does she ever feel that her life isn\u2019t her own because of all the exposure on reality shows?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s 10 years of my life where I grew up in the public eye. I was only 22, and it\u2019s like the norm for me. I\u2019m a very open person, so for me it really works as a job.\u201d<\/p>\n
What about social media trolls and negative comments?<\/p>\n
\u201cYou really do need to control your own feed to make you feel good. Not everything is meant to be seen by you and if someone\u2019s upsetting you, block them. If something\u2019s not connecting with you, get rid of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Olivia](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783475597_832_love-island-s-olivia-bowen-why-alex-and-i-won-t-have-any-more-children.jpg\")
(James Rudland\/PA)<\/p>\n
She now recognises her anxiety triggers, when she feels emotionally out of control.<\/p>\n
\u201cI go into myself, I go very numb, I become very tired and sluggish and just want to hide away. You become a shell of yourself,\u201d she explains. \u201cI just didn\u2019t want to get out of bed, or brush my hair or brush my teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Olivia says she\u2019s been on and off medication for years, has therapy when she needs it and exercising gives her a massive boost. She goes to the gym four times a week and runs once a week, which gives her time to think about herself, she says.<\/p>\n
And, of course, Alex is there to support her.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we spend time together, we laugh till our sides hurt. We know that we absolutely adore each other. It\u2019s less about keeping the spark alive for us, but just more understanding that there are peaks and troughs in life and we want to go through them together.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lost Until Love by Olivia Bowen is published by Blink Publishing. Available now<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two traumatic birthing experiences and the loss of a baby through Vanishing Twin Syndrome prompted Love Island\u2019s longest-lasting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538451,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,282],"class_list":["post-538450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}