Made In Chelsea’s Ollie Locke welcomes ‘beautiful’ twin babies with husband Gareth
Made in Chelsea’s Ollie Locke (L) and husband Gareth (R) have announced the birth of their twins. (Getty)
After a four-year journey to parenthood, Made in Chelsea star Ollie Locke and husband Gareth have announced the arrival of their “beautiful” baby twins into the world.
The reality TV couple tied the knot at the end of 2020 before embarking on a difficult surrogacy journey involving three miscarriages and various surrogates.
In February this year they announced they were going to become a family of four and on Sunday (20 August) shared the birth of their son Apollo Magnus Obi and daughter Cosima Emily Bex in a heartfelt Instagram post, adding they are “more precious than we ever could have imagined”.
The now six-weeks old twins were delivered seven-weeks prematurely by surrogate Bex Ward on 8 July and spent several weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit. The pair found Bex when she offered to help with their fertility journey over social media.
The couple documented Apollo and Cosima’s arrival home in their new YouTube video series, called Our Daddy Diaries.
The first video in the series offers “a first glimpse and the excitement leading up to them coming home with us” as well as insight into their “incredible and unique names that are just perfectly fitting for them both”.
In the 14-minute video, they spoke about their “scary time” time in the neonatal intensive care unit.
“It was something we didn’t want to share until we had them safe, back home with us and all part of the family,” Gareth said. “It is down to the amazing team in the neonatal units we’ve been in that means we’ve got the kids home now and the real daddying is about to begin.”
Elsewhere, in an exclusive interview with Hello magazine, Ollie, 36, spoke about the “wonderful” feeling of becoming a parent and the twin babies being “absolutely amazing” while recovering in hospital.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for,” he said. “It’s this wonderful moment when we know that we’re the fathers we always wanted to be,
“Our little monkeys decided to be really strong. They wanted to come out early because they felt they were ready, and they were absolutely amazing. They needed a bit of help, but not as much as a lot of premature babies.”
“The journey makes the end result all the more worthwhile and now they’re here, it’s the best gift,” Gareth, also 36, added.
Both of Locke’s baby twins have names with Greek origin, while Cosima’s middle names pay tribute to their surrogate Bex and Ollie’s close friend Emily Hartridge, a YouTuber who passed away in 2019.
They hope their video diaries will offer a “raw” perspective of their parenthood journey, away from the “glossy” reality TV cameras.
“People see our lives through the beautiful gloss of [Made in] Chelsea, with the lovely music behind. This is stuff like us getting up in the middle of the night or pulling our hair out because the nappies haven’t arrived. It’s our lives, but very raw,” Ollie concluded.
Many people flocked to social media to offer their congratulations.
“WOOHOOOOOOOOO. THEY’RE HERE & IM SO EXCITED !!!!!!!!! Xxxxxxxx” Made in Chelsea co-star Binky Felstead commented under their Instagram announcement.
“Woooohoooo! So so excited to be Auntie Amelia and so very proud of you both,” Ollie’s sister Amelia echoed.
“Wooohoooooo!” Doctor Who star Pearl Mackie added. “Yay cannot wait to meet!”
Ollie first appeared on E4’s hit reality series Made in Chelsea in 2011 and publicly came out as gay in 2016.
