“I can very much relate,” she says. “It’s something a lot of women experience.”
Panettiere, who gave birth to her first child in December 2014, describes the broad spectrum of emotions and negative feelings that can come with having a baby. “It’s something that needs to be talked about,” she said. “Women need to know that they’re not alone, and that it does heal.”
Many women feel a certain amount of shame for experiencing postpartum depression, but Panettiere, 26, sees it differently. “There’s a lot of people out there that think that it’s not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their minds, that ‘Oh, it’s hormones.’ They brush it off. It’s something that’s completely uncontrollable. It’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.”
So, will Panettiere go on to have four children, as she ultimately hopes to? The star says she’d be pregnant already if only her fiancé, heavyweight champion boxer, Wladimir Klitschko, could carry the load (amen to that!). Even though that’s not possible, the cute couple did their best to share the pregnancy experience: “When I was pregnant, he would do this thing where he would suck in his stomach and then I would put my stomach to his so that he could feel when she was moving — almost like she was in his stomach. He wanted to feel what it was like to have a baby as close to him as it was to me.”
Now that guy is a keeper!
More on Postpartum Depression:
- My Postpartum Depression Was So Severe I Didn’t Recognize Myself
- Why We Need to Keep Talking About Postpartum Depression
- Could THIS Reduce Your Risk of Postpartum Depression?
Photo: Getty
