Happy Day: Bryce Dallas Howard Is Pregnant
Famously battled severe postpartum depression
Another movie star joins the ranks of celebrities currently expecting babies.
Us Weekly broke the news that Bryce Dallas Howard and actor husband Seth Gabel are expecting baby number two.
Let’s hope this time around is much better experience for the mama who admitted to suffering a severe case of postpartum depression after the birth of her son, Theo, in 2007.
In a brutally honest essay for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop blog last year, Howard, who is the daughter of child actor and director Ron Howard, detailed her struggle.
Howard found at she was pregnant just five days after her wedding in 2006, when she was only 25, and gained more than 80 pounds during her pregnancy. After giving birth she says she called her son “it” even though he was named Theo, convinced herself she was a terrible actress and mother and struggled to breastfeed:
Before Theo was born, I had been in good humor about my 80-pound weight gain, but I was now mortified by it. I felt I was failing at breast-feeding. My house was a mess. I believed I was a terrible dog owner. I was certain I was an awful actress; I dreaded a film I was scheduled to shoot only a few weeks after the birth because I could barely focus enough to read the script. And worst of all, I definitely felt I was a rotten mother–not a bad one, a rotten one. Because the truth was, every time I looked at my son, I wanted to disappear.
Ultimately Howard credits a therapist, fellow moms, and Brooke Shields book, Down Came The Rain, on postpartum depression (which she calls a “revelation”) for her recovery.
Did you suffer from postpartum depression and did it affect your decision – or make you nervous – to have a second child?
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