Mena Suvari has revealed she struggles with postpartum depression “every day”, more than a year and a half after giving birth to her first child.
The American Pie the 43-year-old actress told Rachel Bilson Broad ideas podcast this week, “All I’m going to do next month is test my hormones. It’s very real.”
Suvari, who has been open about drug addiction and child sexual abuse, said she didn’t want to “sugarcoat” what’s happening now, saying mothers are expected to “do your job” , adding, “but I do.” they want to help others. I don’t think it’s doing anybody any good if I sit here and act like I’m perfect and act like I’ve got it all together.”
The american beauty The star said everyone is just trying to “survive and do the best we can, and we have to help each other.”
Suvari said that along with therapy, she has a “strong group of friends,” works with holistic practitioners and is getting hormone testing and blood work to learn more about her body.
She recalled sitting on her balcony after giving birth to her son, Christopher, in April 2021, saying, “I have to get out of the house. I have to get out of the house.”
Her husband, Michael Hope, and her postpartum doula told her, “‘You can go. You can go for a walk. And I said, ‘But I didn’t think I could,'” she said.
Suvari, who shot to prominence in the American Pie movies, he married Hope in 2018 and the couple welcomed their first child in 2021.
She said she was freaking out, thinking, “I have to do something for myself, but I can’t leave.”
Suvari says she still struggles to realize she doesn’t need to “be there [her son’s] face 24 hours a day to raise a good human being because of my fear.”
She added that when she was pregnant she “wholeheartedly” thought she could have a “holistic” water birth, but she had a 24-hour home birth and a 24-hour hospital birth with an epidural “and then I finished. with an emergency C-section.”
The actress said she didn’t want to “take all that stuff” advised by doctors and said she was “high like a morphine head when [took her] baby out,” adding that her husband was able to carry their son “skin to skin.”
“I still suffer from this,” he said. “And I have the right to these emotions. We as mothers have a right to these emotions. And just because I have a beautiful baby who is perfectly healthy, my husband is wonderful, and we got out of the hospital, I still feel like I’m allowed a space to be sad about not having this birth.”
This story originally appeared on Fox News and is reproduced with permission