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Ellie Reeves and her husband John Cryer already have one Labour gain in the bag - after the Labour candidate gave birth to a baby boy during the election campaign.

The pair, one of just four married couples in the Commons, welcomed little Thomas into the world five days after the race kicked off.

Ellie, 38, was stuffing envelopes at her home in her Lewisham West seat within days of her second son’s arrival - and last week the pair took him out knocking on doors for the first time.

The Labour candidate for Lewisham West and Penge in South London admits the baby “slept through most of it” but that voters were “generally really nice and sympathetic” when they saw her with a pram.

Her husband John, who represents Leyton and Wanstead in East London, has carried on campaigning without any real break.

“He’s really hands on, he wants to do as much as he possibly can with the children,” Ellie says.

(Image: TIM ANDERSON)

“People are a bit more forgiving of me not being able to do stuff, in comparison to him.”

Ellie hopes to take the full six months of proxy voting if re-elected so she can avoid taking baby Thomas into Parliament - and thinks new mum MPs should be entitled to a full year.

“I’m very happy to do constituency stuff, I’m doing that now, it doesn’t really ever stop and that’s part and parcel of the job,” she says.

“But because of the unsociable hours of Parliament and because it’s not on the doorstep, I don’t want to go back to late night voting when he’s six months old.

“Outside of the Westminster bubble people are entitled to 12 months of maternity leave if they want to, and as lawmakers I think we should lead by example. To have to go back to late night voting with a very smnall baby to me is just out of step with maternity legislation.

“And in terms of encouraging more women to put themselves forward, and being a more modern workplace, it’s totally out of step with that.”

Ellie, whose sister Rachel is also standing for re-election, hopes that MPs will eventually be able to share parental leave.

“It should be an option, whether it’s something we’d take advantage of I’m not sure,” she says.

(Image: TIM ANDERSON)

She hopes Parliament will bring in deferred divisions so parents of young children can vote in the morning, rather than late at night.

“One of the problems is the unpredictability. I can remember one occasion when I was pregnant and was told at 1pm that the votes could run until any hour.

“I was pregnant, had really bad nausea and a bladder infection and a four-year-old in nursery and I basically called my mum in tears”.

But the Labour politician was back at work planning her election campaign after just one day of maternity leave.

“I was struggling to travel and to commute and then of course we voted for a general election ,” she says.

“I felt a bit sick to be honest. I just thought this is terrible. The baby was due in a couple of days and I just thought I have so much to sort out.

“Everyone says don’t worry because other people can do stuff for you. But actually if leaflets are going out in my name I have to be able to sign all that off and sort out the content. So immediately I had loads of work to do.”

(Image: TIM ANDERSON)

In the end, baby Thomas was eight days late and Ellie says it was “just as well” as it gave her time to get everything signed off.

She was out campaiging until the day before her contractions began - and says her constituents’ reaction was very positive.

“Whenever I went out I had my hospital bag in the boot of the car,” she says.

Thomas, who has an older brother Albert, was born in Lewisham Hospital’s maternity unit which was “absolutely amazing, really brilliant”.

Ellie has no plans to follow another new political mum, Stella Creasy, who has appointed a locum MP to handle her casework.

“Nobody can stand in my place in Parliament - speak in debates or do my committee work. It’s the case work and office management and I’ve got a fantastic office manager. I’m confident that I have a really strong team.”

But the she has no strong desire for Thomas, whose paternal grandparents were also both Labour MPs, to follow in his parents’ footsteps.

“Politics would need to change quite a lot before I’d want my kids to go into it,” she says.

And she reveals that Jeremy was not on the couples’ list of names for their new arrival.

“He was always going to be called Thomas. We just really like the name.”