Strictly’s Oti Mabuse compares lack of sleep to ‘hangover without the alcohol’ after welcoming first child

Former Strictly Come Dancing star Oti Mabuse has shared an update after becoming a mother for the first time over Christmas, saying the sleepless nights have left her with a “hangover without the alcohol”.

Mabuse, a professional dancer and judge on Dancing on Ice, announced on Christmas Day that she and her husband Marius Lepure had welcomed their first child.

In an Instagram post, Mabuse shared a series of photos in which she is seen cradling her newborn with Lepure snoozing in the background.

Reflecting on their shared lack of sleep since becoming new parents, Mabuse said it was “like having a hangover without the alcohol”.

She wrote: “How do we feel???? Let me see… Little moments where @mariusiepure and I look at each other laugh and ask ‘how confused do you feel? At 3.34am.’”

Mabuse continued: “Celebrating dirty diapers and cursing at Instagram moms who make this look easy.”

Balancing the sleepless nights with pumping milk “non-stop”, Mabuse said she impressed herself by finding a spare 10 minutes to have a shower over the New Year’s weekend, which she said felt like “winning the lottery”.

“All in all, [we’re] having the best time and loving every milestone!” the Dancing on Ice judge concluded.

Craig Revel Horwood, a longtime judge on Strictly, joked in the comments that Mabuse’s older sister Motsi, who is also a judge on the BBC dancing show, would be a great babysitter.

“If you need a babysitter I bet @motsimabuse is fab-u-lous,” he wrote. “Looks to me like you’re doing a marvellous job x x.”

TV presenter Amanda Holden added: “You’re doing brilliantly.”

After announcing the news in August that she was expecting a baby, the dancer said the couple had decided to stop trying to conceive before she fell pregnant because it “just got too much”.

While Mabuse had kept the due date of her baby under wraps, she had hinted that the newborn could be arriving at Christmas time when she wrote: “We love our little bundle of joy so much already… Christmas is about to get even louder.”

Mabuse was Lepure’s dance partner when they competed for Germany in show dance Latin in 2012. Lepure proposed to her in 2014 and they married later that year.

The dancer, 33, joined Strictly as a professional cast member in 2015 and went on to win the glitterball trophy in 2019 and 2020 with the Emmerdale actor Kelvin Fletcher and comedian Bill Bailey.

In 2022, she left the BBC dancing show and replaced the Doctor Who star John Barrowman as a judge on ITV’s ice skating show Dancing on Ice.