baby

Beautiful news! Rebecca Maddern announces she is pregnant at 40.

AFL Footy Show host Rebecca Maddern has announced she is pregnant with her first child.

Posting on Instagram, the TV presenter wrote her and husband Trent Miller “can’t wait” for their new arrival next year.

In an interview with The Fix, Maddern said she and her husband of three years have enjoyed surprising their closest family and friends with the news.

“It’s been so special over the past few days to share the news with family and close friends,” she said.

She added the pregnancy hadn’t been an easy one, with the TV host and journalist riddled with morning sickness round the clock.

“I suffered quite badly with morning sickness, or as as I like to call it 24/7 sickness, early on,” she told the news outlet.

“That’s tough because you can’t tell workmates why you’re not 100 percent — but that has pretty much passed now, so it’s nice to start to enjoy the feeling of being pregnant.”

In June, 40-year-old Maddern touched on the difficulty of being a childless woman in the public eye, saying she could not win when posed with a question about whether she wanted children.

“It’s a no-win answer because if I say, ‘No, I don’t want children,’ then the stereotype is that I’m a hard-faced b.i.t.c.h,” she told Stellar Magazine at the time.

“If I say I want children, then perhaps this article will become, ‘Well, Rebecca’s 40 but, you know, barren,’ to use that word that was applied to Julia Gillard unfairly.”

In a separate interview with The Herald Sun, Maddern said she planned to be part of The Footy Show for as much of next year as she can.

“At this stage I plan to be part of The Footy Show for as much as I possibly can in 2018, although in saying that, it is really hard to set a timeline when a baby is involved,” she said.