Chrissy Teigen Opens Up About Secret Battle With Postpartum Depression
Published on March 6, 2017.Photo by Jen Lowery/SilverHub/REX/Shutterstock
Chrissy Teigen is one of those celebrities who is always upbeat, open and extremely relatable, but since welcoming her daughter Luna she has been going through a private battle with postpartum depression and anxiety.
For Glamour magazine’s April cover story, the gorgeous model and wife of John Legend opened up about how she changed following the birth of Luna in a personal and revealing essay. After welcoming their daughter last April, the 31-year-old said she tried to return to her life as normal and went back to her role on Lip Sync Battle but the fact of the matter was, things weren’t the same.
“Getting out of bed to get to set on time was painful. My lower back throbbed; my shoulders — even my wrists — hurt. I didn’t have an appetite. I would go two days without a bite of food, and you know how big of a deal food is for me,” she wrote. Another thing she really noticed was her moody and emotional behaviors that weren’t like her. “One thing that really got me was just how short I was with people. I would be in my dressing room, sitting in a robe, getting hair and makeup done, and a crew member would knock on the door and ask: ‘Chrissy, do you know the lyrics to this song?’ And I would lose it. Or ‘Chrissy, do you like these cat ears, or these panda hands?’ And I’d be like: ‘Whatever you want. I don’t care.’ They would leave. My eyes would well up, and I would burst into tears. My makeup artist would pat them dry and give me a few minutes.”
She continued, “I couldn’t figure out why I was so unhappy. I blamed it on being tired and possibly growing out of the role: ‘Maybe I’m just not a goofy person anymore. Maybe I’m just supposed to be a mom.’” As things got worse she admitted that she would not even go outside unless she absolutely had to.
“When I wasn’t in the studio, I never left the house. I mean, never. Not even a tiptoe outside. I’d ask people who came inside why they were wet. Was it raining? How would I know — I had every shade closed,” she says.“Most days were spent on the exact same spot on the couch and rarely would I muster up the energy to make it upstairs for bed. John would sleep on the couch with me, sometimes four nights in a row. I started keeping robes and comfy clothes in the pantry so I wouldn’t have to go upstairs when John went to work. There was a lot of spontaneous crying.”
Finally, after concerns she sought out the help of a doctor with the support of her husband.
“I looked at my doctor, and my eyes welled up because I was so tired of being in pain. Of sleeping on the couch. Of waking up throughout the night. Of throwing up. Of taking things out on the wrong people. Of not enjoying life. Of not seeing my friends. Of not having the energy to take my baby for a stroll. My doctor pulled out a book and started listing symptoms. And I was like, ‘Yep, yep, yep.’ I got my diagnosis: postpartum depression and anxiety. (The anxiety explains some of my physical symptoms),” she said of finally getting her diagnosis.
Teigen also revealed she is speaking up because she wants people to know how real postpartum is for anybody, “I’m speaking up now because I want people to know it can happen to anybody, and I don’t want people who have it to feel embarrassed or to feel alone,’ she says. “I also don’t want to pretend like I know everything about postpartum depression, because it can be different for everybody. But one thing I do know is that — for me — just merely being open about it helps.” She also added that it hasn’t stopped her or Legend from wanting more kids. “I love John and Luna more than I can imagine loving anything, and John and I still hope to give Luna a few siblings. Postpartum hasn’t changed that.”
Read more of Chrissy Teigen’s essay here.