“I just didn’t feel it. I didn’t get it.”
The Loose Women presenter was just 18 when she had her first child, Zach who’s now 12-years-old. She recently appeared on Bryony Gordon’s Mad World podcast where she spoke about struggling to “feel it” when he was born.
She said: “I have moments with Zachy where I think, ‘Oh, I wish I loved you from the very minute.’ Not that I didn’t, I’m sure I did, I just didn’t feel it, and I didn’t get it. And it brings me tremendous guilt.”
At such a young age, Stacey was struggling with her new identity as a mum and how she was now perceived. She said: “I will always be a teenage mum from Dagenham. I was the girl on the bus with a baby and everyone was tutting at me – because I looked like a baby with a baby.”
Never letting a challenge hold her back, Stacey went on to find fame with X Factor and has since carved out a successful TV career for herself, after winning I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2010.
Stacey and her partner, fellow jungle star Joe Swash recently moved into their dream home in Essex; a beautiful country pile called Pickle Cottage. The presenter explains that she felt “really emotional” about owning the property as everyone told her she would never be a “success”.
She said: “We got really emotional. I had a baby really young and everyone said my life was over and I’d never be a success. We cried a bit. Even if God forbid something happens, because you never know what’s going to happen in life, and we have to lose the house, we’re going to get a chance to be here for a little while. Whatever days we get here, it’s just the best ever. We’re so blooming excited.”
Stacey also has Leighton, eight, from her previous relationship and Rex, 23 months, with Joe.
