Soap Opera Actress Pregnant With Baby No. 2

Ali Bastian, who stars on the U.K. soap opera Hollyoaks, and her husband, David O’Mahony, are expecting their second child. Bastian, 40, shared the news with OK! Magazine late last month. They have been married since March 2019 and are parents to a 2-year-old daughter Isla.

The new baby is expected in February. The couple already knows the baby’s sex but has chosen to keep that information private. Basian and O’Mahony said Isla was excited to learn she would be a big sister.

“Isla came into our room one morning and we were having snuggles. I said to David over her head, ‘I think we should tell her now’ and he agreed,” Bastian told OK. “I said, ‘Have you noticed that mummy’s tummy has been getting bigger?’ and she said ‘Yes!’ I said, ‘I’ve got a baby in my tummy.’ And then there was this big smile across her face. “I wish we had captured that, it was magical, I’ll never forget it. She understood. I said, ‘You are going to be a big sister’ and her face lit up.”

Since Isla was born just days before the U.K. began a national lockdown to slow the spread of COVID-19, the couple is looking forward to experiencing things they missed out on the first time. “At the same time, we were in our tiny little bubble in our flat in London and there was a beauty and simplicity in that,” Bastian added.

The story behind Bastian’s discovery she was pregnant again was “a lot less romantic this time,” she said. The two were trying, but she had several negative test results before one pregnancy test finally came back positive. O’Mahony and Isla were out at the time, so she texted him a photo of the positive result. They didn’t believe it, so she asked him to pick up more tests. “He arrived back at the doorstep with the pregnancy tests and Isla asleep in the carrier. He had tears in his eyes,” Bastian recalled.

Bastian was about 20 weeks pregnant at the time she spoke with OK. Before she shared the news with the magazine, she only told her friends and family. Her former Hollyoaks co-stars Sarah Jayne Dunn, Carley Stenson, and Jodi Albert also knew early.

“It’s so exciting,” Bastian told the magazine. “And a bit scary. We had a bit of a bumpy start because I had some early bleeding, so I was sent to the early pregnancy unit. They put me on progesterone because I’d had a miscarriage in the past [in 2018, at five weeks, before getting pregnant with Isla]. I’m very grateful the clinic did that for me. I had a scan and then had what felt like a long two-week wait before having another, and it was an anxious time.”

Bastian played Becca Dean on Hollyoaks from 2001 to 2007. She also starred in the crime procedural The Bill (2007-2009), Holby City (2017), and Doctors (2019). She finished third place on Strictly Come Dancing, the U.K. series that inspired Dancing With the Stars, in 2009.