When fans first met Stacey Solomon on the X Factor in 2009, she was a teenage mum from Dagenham with dreams of making it big.
Having fallen pregnant at 17 with childhood sweetheart Dean Cox, Stacey emotionally told how she spent those difficult years awash with 'shame'.
The aspiring star fell for car worker Dean while studying performing arts at Havering College. They split before their son Zachary was born, but Dean always continued to play a huge role in his son's life.
Indeed, he was less than impressed when Stacey called herself a 'single mum' on the ITV talent show, with his mum Tracy telling the Daily Mail that he was a regular presence in his son's life.
Tracy said: "The way Stacey has spoken about Zach you would think his father doesn't care but that is completely untrue."
A friend of Dean's added: "Zach is often at Dean's house and he's done his best to provide for him. There were reasons why it didn't work between Stacey and Dean.
"He didn't just throw in the towel because she was about to have a baby - he's not like that."
In the years after, Stacey - who has welcomed her fifth child - struggled with the judgement of being a young mum, explaining that she was her own worst critic.
"I always felt the stigma [more] of being a young mum and any of those doubts that me alone wasn't enough for my child came from within rather than from anybody else," she told ITV's Loose Women in 2018.
"I felt that I personally attacked myself and and didn't believe in myself enough to raise children.
"I was more conscious of people thinking 'look at that kid with a kid.' I don't even know if people knew if I was a single parent or not."
While on holiday in Greece in 2009, Stacey met her next boyfriend, painter Aaron Barnham.
Aaron popped the question in December 2011 during a romantic carriage ride around New York’s Central Park.
She gushed about plans for a summer wedding, revealing that she hoped to have a ceremony in Essex with her sisters as her bridesmaids.
But two years after their son Leighton was born in May 2012, the couple had called time on their engagement, announcing their split in 2014.
Stacey is said to have been the one to pull the plug, with sources claiming they had 'grown apart'.
Speaking about the split, she told Closer magazine she had to "constantly remind myself that everything is okay."
She said: "I have the most amazing family, children and friends around me. I really appreciate how much they've been there for me.
"I'm so focused on everything I do and my children that I don't even notice if I'm single or not."
Stacey went on to meet and marry former EastEnders actor Joe Swash. They now live in Pickle Cottage - a sprawling Tudor-style mansion in the Essex countryside with their son Rex, three, and one-year-old daughter Rose, along with Zachary, 14, and Leighton, 10.
And according to Stacey, both Dean and Aaron have continued to be hands-on dads, with the boys spending time with their fathers at the weekends.
And during lockdown, Stacey struggled emotionally when her second and first born asked if they could spend more time with their respective dads.
In January 2021, she explained to her four million Instagram followers: "I'm really missing the big pickles today.
"They wanted to stay longer at their dads and because they are doing school from home they can.
"I do get sad when they don't want to come home, but I know how happy it will make their dads and I never want to stop them from making memories with their family."
Meanwhile, despite having a perfect blended family, Stacey has confessed to feeling 'guilty' for having children by different dads.
In fact, her fears were so overpowering that she even considered not starting a family with Joe, who has son Harry, 15, from a previous relationship.
"I always have an overwhelming sense of guilt that if I were to make my family greater, that I would impact on them socially and emotionally," she told Huffington Post in 2017.
"There's definitely been times in my life where I've felt the stigma of having multiple children from different partners."
She worried that her children would feel 'left out' if she had any more and lived with their dad.
Although she needn't have worried. When Rex arrived, Zachary asked Joe if he also saw him as his son, and the beautiful exchange reduced Stacey to tears.
Appearing on Loose Women, she told how Zachary asked: "So Joe, you know it's nice having, two sort of dads. Am I like another son to you?"
"Joe was like 'yeah of course, I love you all the same'," she added.
"And he was obviously asking if we love all of our children the same and it was just so nice. Well I lost it. I was in the back of the cab and I lost it."
