Why Gwen Stefani Felt “Selfish” During Early Days of Motherhood

Gwen Stefani recently detailed some of the struggles she experienced while having young children and balancing touring with her band No Doubt and making her own solo music.

Balancing motherhood and a career as a pop star is no simple kind of life.

Especially for Gwen Stefani, who was pregnant with her eldest son Kingston, 17, while on tour and then went on an additional tour when he only 9 months old. It was a precarious balancing act.

“I find out I’m pregnant with Kingston,” she said in an upcoming episode of Lauryn and Michael Bosstick‘s The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast . “And I was in rehearsals, and I was like so sick. It’s the first time I had to work with this band, first time I ever had dancers, first time I ever did costume changes, first time being pregnant, and I think I like cried like every night.”

Yet heading back into the studio to record The Sweet Escape after giving birth to Kingston was a fruitful experience. As she remembered, “It just felt so right to keep going with creatively It was just so real and right.”

But when Gwen found herself once again in the studio with No Doubt two years later, having given birth to her second son, Zuma, with then-husband Gavin Rossdale, she had a more difficult experience.

“I had Zuma and we just kept going in the studio and we ended up writing this record called Push and Shove,” she remembered. “And to leave the kids to go do that, I would feel so guilty and selfish. I would go there and like knock my head against the wall and no  song would come. And yet, I’m not with my kid, and I’m not good enough to write a freaking song.”

But write an album she did, and then after a few years, Gwen said a series of subsequent miracles occurred—including the birth of her and Gavin’s third son Apollo, now 9, when she was in her forties. (She and the Bush singer ultimately divorced in 2016 year after 14 years of marriage.)

FREDERIC J. BROWN / Contributor (Getty)

“I basically had Kingston and he was like, “Mommy, when are you gonna have a baby?” she remembered, but despite her telling him she was too old she added, “He would start praying every night for this baby and four weeks later ,praying every night, like, ‘Please let my mom have a baby, and I’m pregnant with Apollo. And I’m 43 years old and it’s like this true miracle.”

Then shortly after giving birth to her youngest, something miraculous occurred once again: here getting a call to do The Voice. After all, it is where she met her future husband, Blake Shelton, with whom she tied the knot in 2021.

“So that was the second miracle,” the 54-year-old explained. “Like, the first miracle was getting pregnant. The second was The Voice. And then the third was, obviously, meeting Blake.”