The One Show host Alex Jones has admitted she feared for her job after having a baby.
The 41-year-old returned to presenting duties just three-and-a-half months after going on maternity leave following the birth of her son.
And she told ITV show Lorraine:”You’ve worked very hard to get where you are.
“Anyone who respects their job, they are scared about someone else stepping in and doing it better … It is a worry.”
Jones, who co-hosts The One Show with Matt Baker, said: “I went back a bit too soon. Before you have a baby you don’t really understand how it’s going to change you.
“I made promises that were a sort of unrealistic. Three-and-a-half months was very early. But we made it work.”
Jones added: “In hindsight, five-and-a-half months would have been better. But you don’t know before going off on maternity.”
She said it was “hard” for women “to admit that they want to go back to work” and that they are going to return “a bit earlier than everyone thinks is acceptable”.
Jones also told the show that new fathers can struggle as “all the focus is on the women and we forget sometimes how difficult it is for the male”.
After a traumatic birth, she said of her husband, Charlie Thomson: “He was left holding this little baby saying ‘Is she going to make it? Am I going to be a single dad?’”
And she said there was “too much pressure on women to breastfeed” with little awareness of how difficult it is.