Former Love Island UK stars Alex and Olivia Bowen have shared that they lost one of their babies due to what’s known as vanishing twin syndrome.

Alex and Olivia, who met on season two of the reality show, spoke about the devastating loss during Tuesday’s episode of Loose Women.

Although the couple first revealed on Instagram last month that they were having a second child, it turns out they were actually expecting twins, which they learned during Olivia’s sixth week of pregnancy.

“I am quite an anxious person anyway, so I was like, right, I’m going to the scan early. You were all for it,” Olivia said, gesturing to Alex, during the show.

The couple was with Alex’s best friend, who waited in the car, and they were going to go grab a beer after the scan.

“I went into the room, and as soon as I sat down, I could see two babies. Not one — which we just were floored by that, weren’t we?” she said to her husband.

Olivia — who already shares a 2-year-old son, Abel, with Alex — also noted that she had twins in her family. When she found out she was having them, she was “quite nervous.”

“We’ve not had a great history of twins in our family. But you were so positive, weren’t you?” she said, again turning to Alex, who noted that he had “all these emotions run through [his] mind” at the time.

He explained that he was both excited and nervous to be a father of twins, but that, sadly, was not to be.

“Like, I can’t wait until we’re on holiday and checking the back of the car, all three kids are playing. And then yeah, unfortunately, that just got kind of taken away,” Alex said.

The pair shared that when they went to another doctor’s appointment, during Olivia’s eighth week of pregnancy, one of her twins “was a little smaller.” She learned that during those two weeks in between her two doctor’s appointments, she had lost her baby.

“Something happened called ‘vanishing twin syndrome,’” she said, as her voice began to break. “One of the babies just basically didn’t have a heartbeat. But I’d had no symptoms, I’d had no pain. No bleeding. Absolutely nothing to tell me that that was what we were walking into, and I guess from that moment we were just completely floored.”

She added: “We were expecting to have these two little babies, but vanishing twin syndrome, that is what happens. They can, as it says, literally just vanish.”

According to the Cleveland Clinic, vanishing twin syndrome is “a miscarriage that causes a pregnancy involving twins to become a pregnancy involving just one embryo.” This can occur “when one of the embryos detected during an ultrasound stops developing.”

During Loose Women, Olivia said that despite the difficult miscarriage, she has found “one beautiful part of it” that she’s trying to hang onto.

“They do absorb into your body, so they just gradually go back into your body,” she said. “Those cells become a part of you, and that’s what we’ve sort of been holding onto.”

While she acknowledged that she and Alex still have a “healthy little baby” who they’re excited to meet, her pregnancy has been an unexpected, “bittersweet roller coaster” of emotions.

“And I know miscarriages are common — one in four — but for twin pregnancies, triplet pregnancies, it’s up to 35 percent,” she said. “It’s a big number.”

She also acknowledged that talking about her experience, especially with other women, has made things “a little easier” for her.

“Especially Alex being a dad, I haven’t seen many men talk about it,” she added, referring to her miscarriage. “We just want to change that perception of not being able to talk about miscarriage openly.”

During an interview with The US Sun earlier this week, Olivia first broke the news of her miscarriage. When posting about the story on Instagram, she acknowledged how difficult it was for her to put her feelings into the right words.

“I couldn’t wrap my head around the happiness & joy I felt for having one safe healthy baby — I know how fortunate we are for that — but at the exact same time feeling the excruciating pain & trauma of losing their twin. It’s like the two couldn’t co-exist,” she wrote in the caption.

She added: “The other reason we are sharing this is because we never want our sunset baby to be forgotten. You existed, you were loved & you were part of our family for a short while. And you are forever now a part of our story & we will never forget you. This is all in your honor baby.”

Olivia and Alex first met in July 2016 while starring in the second season of Love Island when they fell in love on the show. Two years later, they officially tied the knot before welcoming their baby boy Abel in 2022.

On Tuesday, Olivia also shared a video on Instagram of herself with Abel, and Alex opening a box, which had a teddy bear in it. The bear was also wearing a pink bow, revealing that the former reality stars’ second baby is a girl.

Read More