• Gwen Stefani spent many years touring with her sons, but it wasn’t easy on her
• The mom of three admits that she’d see people be “disappointed” by her pregnancy news when it came to how it would impact her music career
• Stefani shares sons Apollo, 9, Zuma, 15, and Kingston, 17, with ex Gavin Rossdale

Gwen Stefani made some amazing memories touring with her little boys, but it was not easy.

The rock star mom, 54, appears on an upcoming episode of The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Show‘s podcast, where she discusses what it was like trying to find balance as a mom to her three sons and as a touring musician.

Stefani got a hand on touring with a little one pretty quickly, bringing oldest son Kingston, now 17, on the road with her at just 9 weeks old.

“I got pregnant, had the baby and when he was 9 weeks old, Jimmy Iovine, who’s the guy at my label, he’s like, ‘You gotta go in the studio. There’s this African rapper you need to work with,’” explaining that she went on to meet Akon and create their track, “Sweet Escape.”

From working on her solo album to touring with No Doubt, Kingston was always by her side.

“It just felt so real and right. I got so ripped off on that tour because I was so sick. I ended up taking the baby when he was 9 months and going and doing a world tour, like 120 shows … We’re in a hotel one day and I thought that I had to stop nursing because I was like, ‘How am I going to nurse and be on stage?’”

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She continued nursing despite her hesitance, “because it was just such an incredible … I waited my whole life to be a mom. That’s all I wanted, my entire life and so I didn’t end up stop nursing.”

“[Kingston] had this fixation with twirling, so I would do my whole hair and my glam and I’d have to nurse him right before I went on stage, and he’d be like trying to pull out my hair,” she recalled. “He was on the tour bus in a little cradle and it was incredible. He went everywhere around the world with me. We went to every zoo that you could go. I never used to see anything before because I was so tired but this time, I’d be like, ‘Okay, I got to take the baby to go.’”

When the tour was over, Stefani was tired but full of memories and gratitude. A month later, she got pregnant with her son Zuma.

“With Zuma, when he turned 9 months, that’s when I went back in with No Doubt and we did another 60 shows together,” she said. “We went back on tour with the babies and, that took it to another level. That was like, ‘I think I’m going to be dead after this tour.’”

Stefani recalls having “no downtime” during those years, “but I really wanted to do it desperately.”

“I just didn’t have anything left in me. And I was going back in to work with them. And I got pregnant with Zuma. And I think everybody was really like disappointed, you know? But it was fine, I had Zuma and we just kept going in the studio and we ended up writing this record called Push and Shove.”

Stefani recalled feeling “guilty and selfish” leaving her kids to go work, and then frustrated when “no song would come.”

“I’m not with my kid, and I’m like spending time wasting it because I’m not good enough to write a frickin song,” she shared.

At that point, Stefani thought her family was complete until Kingston started asking her to have another baby.

“I was like, ‘I’m too old. I’m not having any more babies. I’m sorry, love,’ ” she said. “He just wanted a baby, so he would start praying every night for this baby. Four weeks later, praying every night like, ‘Please, let my mom have a baby,’ and I’m pregnant with Apollo.”

“I’m like 43 years old, and it’s this true miracle, and every time I would go the doctor, I was like, ‘He’s gonna say this is not gonna work out,’ and every time he’d be like, ‘Looking great.’”

She continued, “I think the band was like, ‘What the hell?’ I had Apollo and it was a true miracle.”

Then one day, with a house full of people, Stefani got another life-changing call, asked to step in for a pregnant Christina Aguilera on NBC’s The Voice.

“That was the second miracle. The first miracle was getting pregnant. The second was The Voice. And then the third was, obviously, meeting Blake.”