It wasn’t until Gwyneth Paltrow gave birth to her second child, Moses, that she began her struggle with postpartum depression.
“I felt like a zombie. I couldn’t access my heart. I couldn’t access my emotions. I couldn’t connect,” Gwyneth, 38, says in the February issue of Good Housekeeping.
“It was terrible, it was the exact opposite of what had happened when Apple was born. With her, I was on cloud nine. I couldn’t believe it wasn’t the same. I just thought it meant I was a terrible mother and a terrible person.”
Gwyneth’s hubby Coldplay frontman Chris Martin was the one who first suggested she might be suffering from postpartum depression.
“About four months into it, Chris came to me and said, ‘Something’s wrong. Something’s wrong,’” Gwyneth says. “I kept saying, ‘No, no, I’m fine.’ But Chris identified it, and that sort of burst the bubble.”
“I thought postpartum depression meant you were sobbing every single day and incapable of looking after a child,” she explains. “But there are different shades of it and depths of it, which is why I think it’s so important for women to talk about it. It was a trying time. I felt like a failure.”
We’re glad you overcame it, Gwyneth! Hopefully, new mothers who are suffering will have the strength to recognize their own depression and take the necessary steps to overcome it, as well.
