Making Babies is too intrusive – even for Katie Price ...Middle East

Katie Price has lived her whole adult life in front of cameras. Since she was 17, we have studied every inch of her – first her body in men’s magazines like FHM and Nuts, then her personal life splashed across the tabloids and reality TV. Channel 4’s Katie Price: Making Babies takes that scrutiny to new heights: here, both her relationship and her reproductive system are under the microscope.

The two-part documentary follows Price (already a mother of five at 45) as she tries to have a baby with her new partner – 34-year-old Carl Woods – via IVF. And while the tone of the series is nuanced, both fly on the wall and confessional, it’s hard not to feel that we’re seeing more than we should. Certainly, the endless pelvic exams are the least intimate thing about it.

After their initial assessment with Dr Carole Gilling-Smith, Woods’s sperm count is pronounced normal, while Price’s proximity to menopause means that the probability of conceiving with her own egg is less than 1 per cent. “I’m now paranoid that he doesn’t want to be with me,” she says of Woods almost immediately, a fear that she echoes again and again (this was filmed in 2023, and the pair have since split).

Deciding to press on with treatment against the odds, Price begins taking hormones to stimulate her ovaries. Whether it’s down to the drugs or not, the couple’s bickering takes on a new ferocity. “You should be more tender to me – you’re so blasé about it and it pisses me off,” says Price. Giving Woods a peck goodbye as she goes off to have the eggs collected, she is visibly dejected, half-joking: “He never frenches me anymore.”

Price’s desire for a child is clear, but so is how tightly tied it is to Woods’s own yearning for a baby – she seems to feel that, to keep his love, she needs to give him a baby. Her difficulty conceiving is a double blow: not only must she face the idea that she might not have her sixth child after all, but that her partner might leave her because of it.

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Those struggles will be familiar (and therefore comforting) to many viewers facing fertility problems. Yet, the series is inflected with an emotional rawness that no one – neither its protagonists nor producers – seem totally in control of.

On the contrary, watching Making Babies is uncomfortable in the same way as hearing a couple spar in public is uncomfortable – like being fast-tracked straight to the crux of years of resentment.

While both Price and Woods are snappy, there’s nothing especially wrong with how anyone’s behaving. Still, it feels exploitative, especially considering Price’s recent financial trouble. I couldn’t help but wonder whether part of her motivation for making the programme was to solve a cash flow problem – her prerogative, of course, but its high-stakes subject matter deserves more sensitivity than it receives here.

Nonetheless, the documentary has flashes of incisive brilliance. Although Price’s ordeals – both in her personal and professional lives – have been particular to her, they echo pressures to which every woman is subject. Is my body young enough? Sexy enough? Beautiful enough? Can it make a baby? And if not, does that mean it’s broken somehow?

Price’s approach to those questions has always been to intervene, as though to correct a deficit – as of August 2024, she has had 17 boob jobs and six facelifts. Her attitude to her reproductive struggles seem no different. With two eggs retrieved, spirits are high as the opening episode draws to a close. But while it’s tempting to hope along with Price and Woods, the disharmony in their relationship makes the best outcome of the treatment unclear. I finished unsure how to feel, and hoping that Price would weather this thousandth storm despite her gawping audience.

With rates of IVF increasing year on year, we should arguably be grateful for such unfettered – and continued – access to Price’s experience; body; emotions. Still, I worry that this time, we may have asked too much.

‘Katie Price: Making Babies’ continues tomorrow at 10pm on Channel 4

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