Reese Witherspoon is opening up about her postpartum journey as a young mother after welcoming her daughter, Ava Phillippe.
“It was really bad,” Witherspoon, 49, said of her struggle with depression in one Harper’s Bazaar profile published on Sunday, November 2. “For the first six months, I was simultaneously happy and depressed. I was just crying all the time, I was up all night, I was exhausted. It was a hormone crash that I didn’t expect, which I experienced right after the birth and again when I stopped breastfeeding six months later.”
The actress continued: “Everyone has an opinion. It’s hard to be a young mother and have people tell you how to be, how to react, how to give birth, how to breastfeed and how to feed your baby. It’s overwhelming.”
Witherspoon shares Ava, now 26, and son Deacon, 21, with ex-husband Ryan Phillippeand her 13-year-old son Tennessee with ex-husband Jim Toth.
Once one of Hollywood’s most beloved couples, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe called it quits in 2006 after seven years of marriage, but the two are forever linked thanks to their lookalike children. Although many believe the two met and fell in love while filming the 1999 film Cruel Intentions, Witherspoon confirmed the (…)
Becoming a mother in her 20s was difficult, and eventually a friend encouraged Witherspoon to seek help. “I had the connections and the means to go to a doctor, a mental health specialist, but a lot of people don’t. They struggle alone and hide it,” Witherspoon told the outlet.
As a parent, Witherspoon has encouraged an open dialogue with her children about mental health, thanks in part to how her own mother approached the topic.
Ava Phillippe and Reese Witherspoon
Courtesy of Ava Phillippe/Instagram“My mother never talked about mental health in a way that made it feel untouchable, unspeakable or taboo; she was almost clinical about it,” she recalled. “When I was a teenager, I would proactively ask myself if I was sexually active, about birth control. I don’t beat around the bush. If there’s something on my mind or something I’m worried about, I’ll always be that person to push the edges and ask the hard questions (of my kids).”
The morning show star has been honest about it postpartum struggles over the years, sharing beforehand Jameela JamilThe “I Weigh” podcast from this one it was “a different experience” after each of his children was born.
“(With) one boy, I had a mild postpartum, and (with) one boy, I had a severe postpartum where I had to take pretty heavy medication because I wasn’t thinking straight. And then I had a boy where I didn’t have any postpartum,” Witherspoon said in 2020.
Witherspoon admitted she wasn’t fully prepared for the effect childbirth had on her own health. “We don’t understand the kind of hormonal roller coaster that happens when you stop breastfeeding. No one explained it to me,” she explained. “I was 23 when I had my first baby and no one explained to me that when you wean a baby, your hormones go down the toilet. I felt more depressed than I had ever felt in my entire life. It was scary.”
Witherspoon then “went white-knuckle.” “I reached out to my doctors for answers. There isn’t enough research into what happens to women’s bodies and the hormonal changes we have are not taken as seriously as I think they should be,” she continued. “I have deep compassion for women who are going through this. Postpartum is very real.”
Last month, Witherspoon reflected on how being a young father affected his career and admitted there was a certain “naivety” involved in balancing his work and family life.
“There were roles I couldn’t take on,” he said The New York Times“The interview” podcast.. “I had to have this immediate balance of family and career, being a mom and being a working actress. That’s also why it was scary when Legally Blonde became such a big hit. I wasn’t going to ask for parts, the parts were coming to me. And that almost made it scarier, because I wasn’t picking and choosing what was coming and wouldn’t I like it more?”
Witherspoon claimed she was “always told” not to play mothers on screen. “And I said, ‘But I’m a mom,'” she added. “There were a lot of things about our business that desexualized you, so you couldn’t be a movie star if you played a mother. And thank God, that’s going by the wayside.”