Why Laura Byrne hid third pregnancy from Matty J ‘for months’
Podcast host Laura Byrne reveals why she didn’t tell her husband Matty J that she was pregnant, as the Bachelor couple confirm their third child’s name for the first time.
Stellar
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They met on The Bachelor in 2017. Now, with a third child on the way, Laura Byrne and Matty J discuss the juggle of parenting and podcasting
We all know the adage about not working with children or animals. So how was today’s cover shoot with your daughters, Marlie-Mae, 6, and Lola, 4?
Matty: We did pretty well. We left with more than we came with … We had to bribe Lola with a few freebies.
Laura: She was only in it for the freebies. She got really attached to the Crocs. Lola was like, “I won’t do it unless I get to wear these specific ones.” They were fleece-lined Crocs, because she’s a girl after my own heart. Then she got really stubborn. She’s like, “I’m not going to smile unless I get to keep the Crocs.” So here’s the four-year-old bargaining with the styling team. Anyway, they were like, “Let her have the Crocs.” The shoot is beautiful, but you can see the chaos in it as well. Trying to do a shoot with a six-year-old and a four-year-old is nothing but chaotic. Matt drew the short straw on that and had to do the wrangling, while I just got to stand there and hold my baby bump for the duration.
Laura, you’re looking a million bucks. Matty, you do as well, but you’re pictured building a pile of pancakes and wrangling the girls in a pool in the middle of winter. How close is this to reality?
Laura: It’s very smoke and mirrors. I’m certainly not going to work in stiletto heels and having these power moves while Matt’s at home with the kids. We have a really even dynamic in our household. We both have a lot of work on our plate. At different times, one of us has stepped into the role of being the primary at-home parent, who kind of carries a bit more of the mental load. And that has switched over time.
Matty: We’ve got a pretty good formula right now. We’re operating like a well-oiled machine, which is kind of the calm before the storm that’s about to hit us.
Listen to the full interview with Laura Byrne and Matty J on the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
Yes – in a few months you will welcome your third child, another little girl. How are you feeling?
Laura: In my head, I’m prepared for the worst, hoping for the best. I think I’ve almost over-prepared for it being horrible and hard … Is it gonna be easy? Absolutely not. Is adding another child ever easy? No. But I think I feel the most relaxed about this [child] than I ever have been. So we’ll see how it goes. Ask me again in four months’ time.
Matty: It’s different with number three. The reaction from people when you’re soon to have a third in the mix is worlds apart. Number one and number two, everyone’s really positive. They’re like “Oh my God, this is amazing – how beautiful,” for your first. Number two? “Your family is now complete.” And then number three, people are like, “Ooh, good luck, because that’s gonna be hell.” So we’re bracing ourselves for what’s to come, which does feel a little bit strange. We’re absolutely excited and we can’t wait to meet this little girl, Poppy. But yeah, the reaction from people definitely makes you a little more guarded and apprehensive about what life will be like once they arrive.
You seem to have a genuinely equal division in how you juggle work and family. Even in 2025 that can still be a bit rare.
Matty: Dads have such an unfair advantage when it comes to the perception of parenting and how they’re performing. I feel bad. I’m almost guilty at the fact I can do a supermarket run and do a daycare drop-off and I’m put on a pedestal.
Laura: There was a while there where I would get a bit frustrated. Sometimes people see parity as, “Oh, he does so much.” And I’m like, “Hey, I still do, [too].” I felt like I had to defend myself. I don’t want people to think I’m so much of a “worker” that I’m not putting in all of the time with my kids. It’s this constant juggle around wanting to have a career and a life that feels like there’s purpose outside of just being a mum, and also having ample quality time to spend with our kids. We’ve been really lucky that we’ve struck a really great balance with that.
Matty, do you ever feel the reverse, in that you want people to know that apart from being a great dad, you also take your career very seriously, too?
Matty: I think unless you’re on radio and TV, it’s hard to really gloat about your achievements. Even now, people still look at me and they’re like, “What do you do?” You say you have a podcast and it’s hard because everyone has got a podcast nowadays, so it’s not that impressive. You don’t want to then follow that up and be like “but I get this many downloads each week”. My main job is creating content and people still ask is that enough to support a family.
It’s been almost a decade since the two of you first met on The Bachelor in 2017. Could you have imagined the form your careers would have taken back then?
Matty: When Laura had the idea for Life Uncut [her podcast about relationships and dating, with fellow Bachelor finalist Brittany Hockley], I was like, “What are you doing? What are you thinking? You’re six months pregnant.” I did my best to talk her out of it. I was like, “This is such a bad idea. Come on, you’ve got ToniMay [Byrne’s jewellery line], we’ve got a family that’s about to be created. What are you doing, Laura?”
Laura: I do recall you saying, “No-one listens to podcasts …” We’re so lucky in terms of the communities we’ve built, Matt with Two Doting Dads [his podcast about fatherhood with his good friend Ash Wicks], and Brittany and myself through Life Uncut. We’re a wisp away from hitting 100 million downloads for Life Uncut. So as much as that little impostor syndrome is there, every so often you have to remind yourself: well, we made this.
Listen to the full interview with Laura Byrne and Matty J on the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
Matty, earlier this year you were on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! Did you know you were expecting your third baby when you went into the jungle?
Matty: I didn’t know until I came back. I was completely ignorant to what was happening at home.
Laura: I found out three or four days after Matt had his phone taken off him. He’d left for South Africa. He said his final goodbyes on text message and that was it. He wasn’t accessible anymore. I was about 10 weeks by the time I was able to tell Matt I was pregnant. It was the biggest secret, but then I was also telling random people because I couldn’t tell Matt. I was telling friends, my sister. [To Matty] so many people knew before you, you poor thing. Do you know who else I told before you? Julia Morris. I was like “Julia, I’m so sick. I’m pregnant. Don’t tell Matty, he doesn’t know.”
Matty: Oh f***ing hell, come on! [laughs] … I wish I had known, and then I would have given you the business class seat back from South Africa instead of lumping
you with the kids in premium.
Laura: He sent me a champagne down the back of the plane, and I was like, I can’t even drink it. You don’t even know. I was so dirty.
Matty: Maybe two weeks after [I got home], Laura gave me a scratchie. You said, “Someone has given me this thing – scratch this.” I was scratching it and it was a really bad scratchie, the top layer was coming off. And then the print layer underneath was coming off as well. I’m like, “What is this? This is so cheap and s***.”
Listen to the full interview with Laura Byrne and Matty J on the Stellar podcast, Something To Talk About:
Laura: I’d bought this scratchie on Amazon, and it was meant to be a baby reveal surprise scratchie. And the one I’d seen in the picture, you scratched it and it had this big “We’re having a baby” [written on it]. But I accidentally bought the wrong one. And the one I’d bought had so many icons, it was like a $100,000 scratchie – which is obviously not real because it’s off Amazon – and you’ve got to scratch through every icon, and there’s just one rogue little icon in the bottom right-hand corner that says, “We’re having a baby.” So Matt has given up and I was like, “Keep going!” And he’s like, “I don’t want to even do this.” Anyway, he finally saw it and he was like: “What?” He was just so confused. It was my fault. I made it the most anticlimactic reveal, but it wasn’t my intention. I thought it was going to be, like, “Oh my God, we’re having a baby!”
Matty: I was like “So I didn’t win the money? Did we get $100,000, though?”
You later did a gender reveal where you found out you’re having another baby girl.
Laura: I say to Matt, imagine when they’re all going through puberty and I’m going through menopause. That house is going to be lit.
Matty: When I imagined being a dad, instinctively I just imagined having a son. That was the picture I had in my mind. I think it took me a little while to digest. I’ve had moments where I’ve gone, wow, I’m never gonna hold my son. But at the same time, any disappointment is so far outweighed by the fact I absolutely love Marlie and Lola. I love being a girl dad. I feel like I’m so well suited to being a girl dad. On one hand, it’s a shame, but on the other hand, I’m totally stoked to have three girls.
You’re also mid-renovation on a property on the south coast of New South Wales. Why did you feel you needed to add one more thing to your 2025 to-do list?
Matty: We accidentally stumbled across the house late one night and threw out the hypothetical of “Wow, imagine if that was our house.” We’d always visited the South Coast, we got married down there, we knew it really well. So we thought, why don’t we just go to that inspection and have a look at it? When people say things like “We went to the house and we saw it and we just felt this instant connection,” I’m like, “Shut the f*** up. That is so woo-woo. It’s a house.” But the moment we got there, we just had this weird instant chemistry … Even as I’m saying that, I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m one of those people now.”
Laura: It was definitely an emotional purchase. It was so rundown, it was listed as uninhabitable. The absolute stench of mould just smacked you in the face. The property had been closed off for five years with no-one living in it. We had everything from white ants to snakes in the roof. Our builder has done an incredible job of restoring this old little house on the hill, and it’s almost there.
Matty: Every single time Laura and I stand in that house, we look at each other and just can’t believe how lucky we’ve gotten.
Laura Byrne co-hosts The Pick Up radio show with Brittany Hockley, from 3pm weekdays on KIIS; her podcast, Life Uncut, and Matty J’s podcast, Two Doting Dads, are available wherever you get your podcasts.
Listen to the full interview with Laura and Matty J on Something To Talk About out today. See their cover shoot in Stellar, inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (Victoria), The Sunday Mail (Queensland) and Sunday Mail (SA).
Originally published as Why Laura Byrne hid third pregnancy from Matty J ‘for months’
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