Five years after Jules Robinson and Cameron Merchant first laid eyes on each other at their Married at First Sight wedding, – welcoming a little boy, Ollie, along the way – the couple have announced they are expecting their second child.
WATCH: Jules Robinson launches her FIGUR campaign
“We’ve always been very open about wanting one of each,” Robinson, who turns 42 on March 10, tells WHO as the family joins us for a chat. “We were absolutely convinced last time we were having a little girl, so it’d be lovely if we did now.”
The couple may have started off by sharing every intimate detail of their romance with the public, but they’ve decided to keep the sex of their next bub a secret – even from themselves.
Cameron and Merchant want their baby’s gender to be a surprise and won’t find out until they are holding the little one in their arms, so now they’ve got two names picked out.
“The girl’s name, it’s one that we decided on during the last week of the experiment [on MAFS],” Robinson says. “For the boy’s names, we use the Kinder app, which is like Tinder but for names. We swipe left or swipe right until we get to one we both like. It’s really fun!”
Ollie, 3, is also excited about the arrival of either a little brother or sister, but remains “a little too young” to fully grasp the situation, his mother explains.
The pair have come a long way since their initial meeting on the sixth season of the hit reality dating show. Making things legal, they tied the knot for real in November 2019, before welcoming their son in September 2020.
With Robinson spending the bulk of her first pregnancy in lockdown, their second experience has been “completely different”.
Now, at around 22 weeks into the pregnancy journey, the pair have been able to relax a lot more.
“Being a COVID pregnancy … the scariest part for us was there was a time when we didn’t know if I could be at the birth, which would have been earth-shattering,” Merchant, 40, reveals. “For the families that happened to, I don’t know how they coped.”
Robinson had a very public battle with her weight following the birth of Ollie. After putting on around 20 kilos while pregnant in 2020, the shapewear designer made it her top priority to get fit this time.
“I am seeing a personal trainer three times a week and we’re doing things like boxing and weight training, and I’ve discovered water aerobics, which I’m loving, so am feeling great,” Robinson reveals.
“I want to feel really physically fit and strong to get through the pregnancy, and then to be really mobile and pick the kids up and have lots of energy to take care of them. This pregnancy feels very different to last time,” she adds.
Merchant is in awe of Robinson’s dedication and reveals that he is loving her pregnancy body.
“When my wife puts her mind to something, she goes for it and she achieves it,” he says. “She’s feeling fabulous and I can see the hard work paying off in her energy levels and in the shape of her body as well.”
While MAFS might be better known for its dinner party drama than its success rate, this pair readily credits the program for where they are today – and not just because it provided their introduction.
“It helped us build a really solid foundation,” Merchant says. “We went into [the show] knowing there would be really challenging times or really frustrating times, so very early we set this boundary of whatever we said or did, we kept it in the moment. So we have a lot of mutual respect to go, ‘This happened right now, this is how we feel about it, let’s talk about it and move on,’” he explains.
It’s a sentiment Robinson agrees with, saying that when it comes down to their effective communication strategies, the couple “always say, we have MAFS to thank for that”.
“We had to talk about every single little thing on the show, so we still do talk it out,” she reveals. “We are like normal couples, so, of course, we have those moments where we are, like, at each other, but it always ends with us sitting down and talking about it.”
After seeing the power of reality TV to change lives for the better, the couple confess they might not be done with that world just yet – in fact they have something new in the works.
Before she signed up for MAFS, Robinson worked as a beauty therapist in Australia and London. Merchant has long been involved in work that promotes good mental health and helping people create good habits for a better life. Their background uniquely qualifies them for their next project.
“We’re doing a bit of a test pilot for a new TV show called Renovate Me,” Robinson says. “I’ll do the makeover aspects like the hair, the makeup and working on their confidence. Cam is doing what he does best – looking at the mental and physical health [of the participants].
“We’re picking some people to be a part of it who need that little boost in life and self-love, so it’s really exciting.”
Click here to preorder a copy Jules’ upcoming book, Ask Jules, now.
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