Love Island star Shaughan Phillips opens up on the rollercoaster journey which led to her second pregnancy with jailbird lover Billy Webb as she admits, the couple would ‘like more’
Love Island favourite Shaughna Phillips was flooded with congratulations earlier this week after she announced she’s expecting her second child. But fans will be shocked to learn that the star fell pregnant during a brief home visit from her jailbird lover, Billy Webb – who’s currently serving a nine-year sentence for Class A drug offences.
And although Shaughna admits she planned the pregnancy, even tracking her ovulation to boost her chances of conceiving, she says she was stunned that her baby dream came true so quickly. “It was the first time that my ovulation window coincided with Billy being home,” says Shaughna, who is four-and-a-half months pregnant. “I was like, ‘You know what? Why not? Let’s just see’. And literally, the next day, I said to Billy, ‘I think I’m pregnant.’”
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Her gut feeling was confirmed ten days later, when multiple pregnancy tests showed up positive. “I found out very, very early on,” she exclusively tells The Mirror. “I was doing maybe five tests a day. I’m not even exaggerating. It was borderline mental illness.”
Shaughna says Billy, who was jailed in 2023, is currently allowed out on home visits for “a few days” each month. And while she has so far been forced to raise her daughter as a single parent, the star says Billy is due for early release and should be reunited with his family in time for their new arrival. “I know the date that he’s due to be home, but I’m not saying it just because anything could happen,” she says carefully. “But he will be fully home before my baby is due.”
As Billy missed those sleepless nights and cuddles with Lucia first time round, Shaughna is looking forward to “having someone there” when the new baby arrives. “He definitely wanted another one. He didn’t get that newborn experience [with Lucia] and I think that’s what he wanted,” she says, joking that she wants Billy to “experience the newborn stage and everything it has to offer, because he does not know what is coming his way.”
Shaughna, who’s currently living with her solicitor mum while her home is being renovated, welcomed Lucia in April 2023, by which time Billy had already been taken into custody after being charged with possession with intent to supply a Class A drug.
But she remained committed to keeping the father-daughter bond intact and regularly took Lucia to visit him – despite “hating every minute” of seeing her little girl in prison.
“I never would have chosen this life for my daughter,” she said. “I don’t think it hit me what was happening until I got into the building. I was so nervous, but it was never a question for me. I always knew I was going to take Lucia to visit her dad.”
Shaughna says she already knows if she is going to be giving Lucia a brother or a sister, but is keeping the gender hush-hush. “I do know, but I’m keeping it a little secret, just for now,” she says. “I don’t really have any plans on announcing it. Whether I will or not, I don’t know. But I do know what I’m having, so I’ll need to try and not slip up”.
While Shaughna had hoped she would fall pregnant quickly, she admits she felt conflicted when she first discovered she was expecting, as she didn’t want her daughter to feel like she was “being replaced”.
“I was hoping for it, but then the second I found out, I instantly felt guilty for Lucia,” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, what have I done? I don’t want you to ever think that you were being replaced or anything like that’. It literally breaks my heart when I think about it.”
The reality star, who appeared on season six of the ITV2 dating show, says her daughter “hasn’t got a clue” that her mum is pregnant, joking, “She just probably thinks I’ve had a really big dinner.”
Shaughna recently revealed she’s lost a staggering 6st over the past 14 months, but says she’s determined to be kinder to herself both during and after this pregnancy. “I signed up to a gym three weeks after I had Lucia,” she recalls. “I didn’t go, but I signed up and I was trying to get into my jeans.”
She also admits to putting herself under unnecessary pressure after receiving hurtful comments online. “People are cruel to me regardless – whether I’m skinny, overweight, pregnant, not pregnant, single or not,” says Shauna, who has rubbished claims that her dramatic weight loss is the result of fat jabs. “So I really need to try and drown out that outside noise.”
Even so, it sounds like she’s struggling to overcome some of her past demons. “The whole body image situation in my mind has been spiralling – absolutely spiralling,” she admits. “I don’t know why, and it’s probably putting a little bit of a dampener on things.
“When I got pregnant this time, I was about 3st lighter than what I was when I got pregnant with Lucia. So I don’t know whether I’m seeing the changes more because I weighed less. I’ve got a bump quicker and all of my new clothes obviously don’t fit me anymore.
“I’m just trying not to let it [get to me]. It definitely affected me more in the beginning than it does now, because there’s no greater blessing than a child and I need to get out of my own head. But other than that, I’ve been fine. I actually felt way more exhausted when I was pregnant with Lucia than I have this time.”
Shaughna and Billy first got together in January 2020, after they were introduced by a mutual friend. But the pair put their fledgling romance on hold after Shaughna got the call from ITV2 asking her to appear on the winter series of Love Island. “I was like, ‘I’m not giving up the opportunity for Love Island for a boy I’ve known for less than a month at this point’,” she says.
After Shaughna left the villa, the pair rekindled their relationship, living together until 2023, when Billy was arrested while she was seven months pregnant with Lucia.
He was sentenced to nine years in prison after he admitted conspiracy to supply 4.5kg of cocaine worth at least £360,000. Speaking about the terms of his early release, Shaughna says, “He got nine years, but he had already served one year. So that comes off, and you now serve 40 per cent of your sentence.
“I think by the time he comes out, he would have done over two and a half years – and he will be on tag for a year. I think by the time he’s off tag, it would have been a four year sentence, essentially.”
Reflecting on Billy’s crime, she says, “Obviously he’d done this thing, which was not ideal, and he’s paid his price for it. Although we’re not married yet, I do try to live by the mantra ‘for better or for worse’ and unfortunately, this was the worst.”
Shaughna says Billy is “excited” about having another baby, but jokes that he “doesn’t know what’s going to hit him” when she finally gives birth. He was able to join her for the tot’s 12-week scan, says Shaughna, who reveals she’ll be having her second baby by C-section.
“I had a hospital appointment recently and they said that they think I might need a C-section just because of where my placenta is,” she says. “I was planning a C-section anyway, but it looks like I might have had to have had one, regardless. So yes, this baby will be coming out of the sunroof and not any other exit.”
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