In typically direct fashion, TOWIE star Georgia Kousoulou confesses that she didn’t take to motherhood quite as she expected.
“When I became a mum I lost my identity a bit,” the reality show star reveals in her first book, I Wish I Knew, written after the birth of her son Brody, which charts her journey to motherhood and how she found herself again, offering advice on what she has learned along the way.
She dreaded nights and the prospect of 2am feeds, struggled to connect with her baby, and felt incredibly lonely.
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But Kousoulou, 32, who is married to footwear entrepreneur Tommy Mallet, who she met on TOWIE, has found great solace through her 1.5 million Instagram followers, asking questions, and finding kindred spirits.
“I love Instagram. I’ve used it as a tool to connect with people. I have a lot of questions and don’t know a lot of stuff, especially when it comes to (being a mum).
“I’d never changed a nappy before Brody. I used Instagram to ask for tips and it’s become a community. I say how I feel and maybe I’m a bit too honest, but then other mums have done the same and it’s become a lovely space.”
Happy snapshots of her life are played out on social media – cute pictures of Brody, her marriage to Mallet in December, out on the town with friends and family – but in the book she also charts the tougher times, her parents’ divorce, the panic attacks she suffered when she was on TOWIE, and the pressure her appearances on the show put on her body image, leading her to take up the gym obsessively.
“I was 22 when I started TOWIE and I was very skinny back then, then I got obsessed with the gym, then it became like a competition in my head about who had the best body and who wanted to get the Daily Mail headline. You think you’ll get more work if you’re in the headlines,” says the reality star.
“I did any diet I could find. Every diet. I did diet pills, every one you could imagine… I would’ve done anything just to be skinny,” she writes.
Cosmetic surgery followed. Kousoulou had breast enhancements and a nose job – although she says she wanted her nose done before she appeared on the show.
“I grew up in a Greek and Irish household where a lot of people around me had their nose done. I knew as a young girl I didn’t like my nose, then when I went on TV I knew I definitely didn’t like it because I had to watch myself back. I didn’t like my angle. I couldn’t stand it.”
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When she finally had the surgery, she was trolled relentlessly, she recalls.
“I got so much slap for it. People called me Michael Jackson for about two years, so you can’t win with the trolls, can you?”
The taunts took a toll on her mental health, she agrees.
“It’s hard, you’re feeling s*** anyway, you’ve just had surgery and noses take a long time,” she recalls. Her surgeon told her it would take a full year to heal, but she started filming a month later even though her face hadn’t healed.
After seven years she left TOWIE in 2021 and has never looked back. Today, she’s an influencer and podcaster, stars in the ITVbe reality show Tommy & Georgia: Baby Steps, which charts the ups and downs of parenthood, and lives in an Essex mansion with her husband and son.
She says she is happier than she has ever been, and a lot of that has to do with being a mum to Brody.
In the book, she recalls her pregnancy, giving birth, the struggles of being a mother, mum guilt, baby loss – she had a miscarriage last year – trying for another baby, and how she is moving forward.
She miscarried at 12 weeks and says it was one of the most painful parts of the book to write, and happened while filming series four of their Baby Steps show. For some time afterwards, her main focus was to get pregnant again, but she is now trying to give herself a break.
“It’s a lot of pressure. At the moment I’m just stopping all of the pressure and enjoying life again, because I think I got so lost in the process that I forgot to enjoy what I had in front of me.
“Trying for a baby is one of the worst things I’ve ever done. I didn’t have to try with Brody. With the second baby, which I lost, I got pregnant very quickly. I was very blessed to be pregnant twice so quickly.
“That’s affected me because I’m thinking, why hasn’t it happened a third time? But we’ve both had fertility checks and there’s nothing wrong with us, which is great to know.
“I feel like my body has gone into fight mode from a trauma. My body won’t allow me to get pregnant because I’m in trauma mode. I think the best thing for me to do is heal, get positive and just let it be.”
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She remains confident she will have more children, maybe three or four – the question for her is not if, but when.
Today, to help maintain good mental health she has a therapist. “I think it’s very important when you’re going through things that you have to talk. If I don’t talk I’ll go downhill.”
The daughter of a millionaire property developer, Kousoulou says she’s grateful to TOWIE for giving her the life she has now, but recognises the harm reality TV can inflict on some.
“Back then I was a bit more naïve, TOWIE was very new, there weren’t a lot of reality shows and now it’s just full of them. Now, young kids have grown up to say they want to do reality TV when they get older. To me that’s really sad.
“I love reality TV, but would I want Brody to do it? No, I wouldn’t, because it comes with a lot of pressure, and if it doesn’t work out for you, you then find yourself in a position of, what are you going to do now? And that can be hard on people’s mental health.
“I’ve been blessed and I’m very lucky that I’m still working. I’ve been in the industry for 10 years and that is rare now. People are going on these shows so quickly and then they are dropping. It can be damaging because one minute you’re high and then you’re low. And what do you do after that? It’s very hard.”
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She believes there is more mental health care in place for participants now, although she recalls: “I had a psych (psychotherapist) the whole way through TOWIE, especially when things happened to me, like I’d fall out with someone or they’d find out something has gone on in your home life.
“I think mental health is a priority. It has to be. It’s 2024.”
She hasn’t written off more reality TV for herself. She says she’d probably go to the jungle if she was asked: “I always do things that push me out of my comfort zone. But when you have a child you have to work out if it’s worth it. It is different now, because leaving Brody would have to be worth it for me.”
I Wish I Knew by Georgia Kousoulou is published by Seven Dials on February 29th
