This week marks a year since Lauren Goodger tragically lost her baby Lorena, just minutes after her birth. Now, following her heartache, the TOWIE star says she is ready to settle down with someone new and have another child.
Speaking to New at a photoshoot in Essex, she explained: "I’d like to be in a happy, loving relationship – I deserve that. I want another baby, I do. I want to be in love, I want to be happy again. I’m missing that. I’m really missing a man in my life – I’ve always had a boyfriend – and because my family relationship is really up and down.”
Lauren was an original member of TOWIE and a regular at Essex nightclubs Sugar Hut and Faces - but since becoming a mum, she's more interested in being at home with the TV. She revealed she is hoping to meet a man more interested in sofa-time than late nights out.
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“I don’t know what man I’m going to find,” she says. “I’m not interested in going out, I don’t really want to drink, I just want to chill. I like staying in and being in bed at nine o’clock.
“I’m still fun, but I’m not the Faces Lauren, living her best life, I’m now mum Lauren. This is really new to me. Whenever I’ve got in a relationship, it’s just me. But now I’ve got a daughter. I'm a different person. I’m a mum and a woman – I’ve grown.”
Lauren is co-parenting daughter Larose, who turns two this month, with 26-year-old builder Charles Drury. She is open about the challenges she faces as a single parent.
“It’s really hard,” she admits. “It’s exhausting. The driving, meeting, the organisation is hard work, but I would never stop him seeing her and being at birthdays and special things like that. That’s why I’m doing all the driving and organising.
“We’re making it work for Larose as best as we can. I want him to see her as much as he can, because she needs both parents. She’s got her dad, she sees her dad, but I’m both mum and dad day to day at home.
"Like every single parent I do absolutely everything and I’m exhausted. But she’s amazing and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Following her heartache last year, Lauren said she functioned on autopilot, unable to properly process the death of her baby. “I can’t believe it’s been a year. It feels like it happened a few months ago, it’s only just sinking in now," she said.
"It didn’t sink in for ages and I don’t think it fully has hit me at all.
“A lot went on around that time which blocked me from actually concentrating on the most important thing that happened. So going through certain things I went through at the time didn’t allow my brain to section things off what was going on.
“It was just a lot of trauma in one go. I was on autopilot. I moved house and I just didn’t ever sit still.
“Now that things are calming down a little bit and time is going on, it’s registering. It’s really hard and I would do anything to have Lorena.”
The usual milestones have been particularly difficult for Lauren, "the little things," she said. "She would be nearly walking, first words… and she’s not here. And to be honest, it’s hard for me, but it’s really hard because of Larose. It would be so nice if she had that little sister to play with.”
She admits to feeling "nervous" for the first anniversary of her daughter's death. “Mother’s Day was awful for me this year. I really struggled.
"I spent the whole day in absolute tears. I didn’t know the day before that I was going to be like that – it just comes over you.
“Because I don’t know how I’m going to be feeling, I don’t want to put any pressure on anything.
”I’m 100% going to light her candle, let off a lantern and do stuff beforehand, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it into a meal with family, or have people at my house. I don’t really want to be on my own.”
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