Stacey Solomon feels 'tremendous guilt' over postnatal depression

Stacey Solomon has told how she feels “tremendous guilt” that postnatal depression initially affected the way she felt about her first son.

The Loose Women star welcomed Zachary with a former partner when she was just 18.

Speaking on Bryony Gordon’s Mad World podcast, she said her struggle with postnatal depression meant she “just didn’t feel it” at the time.

“I don’t look back and regret anything because what’s the point in that, it won't get me anywhere,” said the TV star, 31.

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“But I definitely look forward and have moments now with Zacky where I think, ‘Oh I wish I loved you from the very minute.’

"Not that I didn’t, I’m sure I did, but I just didn’t feel it and I didn’t get it.”

“It brings me tremendous guilt, especially when I love my other children,” Solomon went on. “When they’re born and I love them and I’m like, ‘This is amazing’, I immediately feel like, ‘Wow I was terrible when I had Zach.’

“But it is what it is, I can’t change it. It was just the way that I felt.”

Solomon is also mum to eight-year-old Leighton from a previous relationship, and she and her fiance Joe Swash welcomed son Rex together in May 2019.

The star said what she went through when she had Zachary helped prepare her when she had her other two children, as she knew the feelings would pass.

“When I was in it with Zach, I genuinely thought, I am never going to be happy again and I am never going love my child,” she said.

“It just made me feel horrendous.

“When I had Rex a couple of years ago I got exactly the same feelings, just the gut wrenching, just unhappy, I’d just feel deeply unhappy for no reason.

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"I’m so happy but just deeply unhappy and uncontrollably sobbing all the time, but at least I knew whilst I was going through that little stage that I would come out of it.”

According to the NHS, postnatal depression is a type of depression that many parents experience after having a baby.

The site said: "It's a common problem, affecting more than 1 in every 10 women within a year of giving birth. It can also affect fathers and partners."

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