Joe Swash has admitted he had to "bite his tongue" at times, following the birth of his son Rex. The TV star welcomed his baby boy with partner Stacey Solomon in May – and during a candid conversation with Stacey on her podcast, Here We Go Again, he said he struggled with Stacey's "lioness" approach to caring for their newborn. Loose Women star Stacey conceded that she had struggled to let other people near little Rex, and admitted it even got to the point where she didn't want Joe to go near their son when he had just put on deodorant because of the smell. "I did go a little bit, I'm not going to say crazy, I'm going to say warranted," Stacey said. "I went lioness, it was all necessary, or at least I believed it was necessary at the time."
The 30-year-old continued: "It was imperative for me at that point, after I had Rex I felt like – also because he was a little bit early, and he was tiny and he struggled to feed, I just didn't want anything to harm him and this overwhelming sense of needing to protect him just took over my life." Turning to Joe, she explained: "Nobody was allowed near him, including you, and that wasn't anything against you, but I just struggled. I didn't want anyone kissing him, I didn't want any germs going near him…"
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In response, Joe admitted: "I did have to bite my tongue because every urge and every feeling that you get about Rex as a mum, you know, being a lioness, wanting to protect him, as a dad I get those exact same feelings." Joe, 37, also noted that people tend to think that a father's feelings towards their children aren't as strong as their mother's, but added: "They are. So I did struggle."
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Stacey has won over a legion of new fans thanks to her honest approach when it comes to discussing parenthood. In a live Q&A on Instagram this week, she admitted she is still struggling to get her little boy to sleep through the night. "Loads and loads of questions on here about routines," she began. "Is he sleeping throughout the night? What's my routine? I can honestly say I spend a lot of my life researching and asking other parents how they're doing. Because I am just not getting it right. I'm trying all the techniques, I'm trying to get him into an established routine. There seems to be some sort of routine where he, like, has his little naps at the same time every day but they're tiny. They're like micro-sleeps. No matter what, I've fed him during the day, no matter how many naps he's had, he always, without fail, wakes up in the night really hungry wanting a bottle. So I don’t know if it's just a development thing, and one day he's just going to snap out of it. That’s what I'm hoping for."