Cheryl Cole Officially Announces Pregnancy With Liam Payne

It’s official: Cheryl Cole and Liam Payne are expecting a baby.

The 33-year-old former “Girls Aloud” singer revealed her baby bump in a photo shoot for L’Oréal Paris and The Prince’s Trust, published on the cover of Thursday’s Daily Mirror.  

This will be the first child for both Cole and her One Direction beau.

Speculation about Cole’s pregnancy  has circulated since September 2016, when Cole was spotted with a tiny bump. People confirmed Cole’s pregnancy with Payne in November of 2016, but the couple has kept mum on the subject until now.

Cole and Payne first met back in 2008 , when the latter auditioned for the U.K. version of “The X Factor.” Cole served as a judge on the show. Though Payne did not make the cut in 2008, he auditioned again in 2010 and was placed in the boy band One Direction. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

Cole and Payne reconnected in late 2015 and began dating officially in 2016. Cole has been married twice before first to soccer player Ashley Cole from 2006 to 2010, and then to Jean-Bernard Fernandez-Versini in 2014. Her divorce from Fernandez-Versini was finalized in October of last year.

If you’re wondering how Payne feels about the news, look no further than his Twitter bio : The 23-year-old singer has declared himself “the luckiest man in the world.”

Congratulations to the happy couple!