'I am really looking forward to turning 40, you just give less of a s**t' - Kathryn Thomas

The RTE star (38) and fiancé Padraig McLaughlin welcomed their first child, a baby girl Ellie, in April and are thrilled at the prospect of a child-focused Christmas season.

"I shouldn't be shouting it from the rafters, but I am telling everyone," she told the Sunday World magazine. "I should be telling people that I am 38 for the next three years. I am really looking forward to turning 40, you just give less of a s**t about what people think of you and what you look like.

"I am proud of all my achievements, Ellie being one of the biggest ones."

Thomas previously spoke about her struggles with pregnancy and her experience with having two miscarraiges.

"This time last year I was pregnant and back then it was a very different Christmas. I wasn't looking to the year ahead, I was just taking it day-by-day because I was a nervous Nelly with my pregnancy," she said. "Right throughout my pregnancy I couldn't relax until she was born. I just couldn't relax and switch off.

"I constantly felt like, 'oh my God, is this going to happen?'"

As for wedding plans, Thomas and McLaughlin put the organising on hold on two occasions when she became pregnant and says now her main focus is throwing a 40th birthday to remember. "We have gone off and on piste, having to cancel twice when I got pregnancy. It is less important when you have a child. We certainly do want to get married, but the focus for so long was to have a baby. It took us three years."