Bella Mackie says she was 'crushed' when trolls told her she had stopped her husband Greg James from having kids as she reveals they have spent eight years 'having endless talks'

Bella Mackie has said she was 'crushed' when trolls told her she had stopped husband Greg James from having kids. 

The author, 43, revealed that the couple, who tied the knot in 2018, spent eight years of their relationship 'having endless talks' about whether they wanted children. 

Bella said she 'always assumed' she'd be a mum one day but as she tied the knot for a second time with BBC Radio 1 DJ Greg the pair decided that they 'weren't sure they wanted a child enough'.

Previously Bella was married in her twenties to an unnamed partner who left the marriage within nine months. 

Now opening up on How To Fail with Elizabeth Day, Bella said she was 'worried and scared' how her lifelong struggles with severe anxiety, panic attacks, agoraphobia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) would affect her if she had a baby. 

She said: 'I don't mind when people ask me [about deciding not to have children]. I mind when people write comments on social media saying like "I think she should have a child and she's being a narcissist not doing it" or like "I think she's stopping her husband from being happy".

'I mind that. I don't mind talking about it. I mind people's reactions imagining that they like know what's going on in my womb. 

'I think that I always assumed I'd have kids because I think that's what you do, especially of women my age, I think it was very much like "when you have children, when you're a mother". Quite a lot of when, never an if, you know, if you have a child.

'So I think I just assumed that I would have a kid. And then I got married for the second time and I think we just were like, well that'll be the thing that we do next, we've hit the marriage thing and now we've run out of things to say, we'll have a kid.'

She continued: 'And yeah we didn't and we talked about it and then I think we both kind of came to the conclusion that like did we actually want to have a kid or were we just two people that had kind of assumed that we would have a kid.

'Genuinely we've now talked about it for, we've been together 10 years next year, so we've talked about it seriously for about eight years. 

'We've gone on endless dog walks where we've just walked and walked and talked about, the potential baby that we don't have. 

'I think we just decided that we weren't sure we wanted it enough.'

Bella reflected how trolls comments about her stopping Greg from having children 'crushed' her and caused her 'upset and anger' for quite some time.'

She continued: 'It's different for everyone but for us I think we just thought we could take it or leave it and that just didn't feel like a good enough reason to do it

'But I remember something had come out about Greg and I googled his name and this mom's net thread came up and there was a woman being like, "He seems lovely, I think his wife is stopping him from having a kid because of her mental health," and I think that's really sad.

'I remember being really crushed by that and really upset and angry about it and thinking mind your own business. 

'But I think she probably had a kind of a point which is I think if my mental health had been better I would have jumped straight in and done it without thinking about it and we would have a kid by now.

'But I think you do have to also consider that if you have bad mental health or erratic mental health or whatever it is, you can be a challenge in motherhood

'And it worried me a lot, the idea of having to cope with OCD and motherhood. I know that OCD often gets worse in pregnancy and postpartum.

'And that really worried me and the idea of then throwing a baby into the mix scared me.' 

She added that there is 'weird sexism' over not wanting to have children as she explained if Greg is asked if he wants to be a dad and replies 'I don't want children' people won't believe him. 

In August, Bella shed light on how she and husband Greg adopted their late dog Barney in place of having children.

The author wrote an emotional article for Vogue, entitled “My Perfect Dog Died. What The Hell Do I Do Now?” in which she detailed how they thought they had 'cracked it' by choosing a dog over children.

The couple's beloved pooch, who they adopted from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in 2019, passed away earlier this month and they have been sharing details of their grief online while Greg was also forced to take time off work.

She wrote: 'A good lesson in life – and one I only learnt this week – is not to get a dog in place of a kid... I love the dog so much I’ll never be able to love a kid more.'

The heartbroken author revealed it was 'love at first sight' when Greg saw Barney and after adopting and training him, he later suffered increasingly ill health, a number of operations and finally the decision that he could no longer suffer.

Bella then quoted Philip Larkin's 1956 poem An Arundel Tomb, writing: 'What will survive of us is love. I don’t imagine Philip Larkin would be thrilled that I’m applying his genius to a slightly overweight Labrador called Barney, but here we are...

'His love was wonderful, wonderful enough that one day we’ll get another dog from Battersea (I miss those smug points) and upend our entire lives in service of them. Until then, I don’t know what the hell to do.'