Hayden Panettiere was a guest on Live! With Kelly and Michael yesterday, where she was promoting her show Nashville on ABC. (Season three premiered last week and is waiting for me on the DVR.) Hayden is married to boxing great Wladimir Klitschko, and the couple welcomed a baby daughter, Kaya, last December. During her pregnancy, Hayden was open about her weight gain, even going into the specific numbers of how much she’d gained. Hayden continues to be open about what she went through immediately following her daughter’s birth, and revealed that she suffered from postpartum depression (PPD). Here’s some of what she said on Live!, thanks to E!:

During an appearance on Live! With Kelly and Michael Monday, the Nashville actress revealed that like her character, Juliette Barnes, she suffered from postpartum depression after the December 2014 birth of her daughter, Kaya Klitschko.

“I can very much relate. It’s something a lot of women experience. When [you are told] about postpartum depression you think it’s ‘I feel negative feelings towards my child; I want to injure or hurt my child.’ I’ve never, ever had those feelings. Some women do,” Hayden said. “But you don’t realize how broad of a spectrum you can really experience that on. It’s something that needs to be talked about. Women need to know that they’re not alone, and that it does heal.”
Regarding the stigma surrounding postpartum depression, Hayden said, “There’s a lot of misunderstanding. 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.”

Hayden, who revealed she hopes to have four kids with fiancé Wladimir Klitschko, continued, “Women are amazing. We do something that no man can do on this planet. I mean, we grow a human being in our body!” Speaking of the heavyweight champion, she told the co-hosts, “I would love it if Wlad figured out a way to get pregnant and he could have the baby. We would be going right now, no problem.”

“If he could, would he?” Kelly Ripa asked. “That’s the question.”

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Hayden assured her. “I asked him this question…He’s going to be like, ‘I can’t believe you told them!’ But when I was pregnant, he did 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.”

[From E! Online]

That’s a cute story about her husband trying to feel the baby on his own stomach but it feels really personal. I wonder if he’s ok with her sharing it.

It sounds like Hayden’s postpartum depression was relatively mild, but that she’s admitting this and talking about it anyway. That takes a lot of courage and I appreciate how she explains it. She has such a sunny personality that it’s hard to see her as depressed at all. That could just be her public persona, though. Sometimes the people who suffer from depression are the ones we least expect as it can be a hidden illness.

Hayden said something similar in her US Magazine “25 Things You Don’t Know About” piece. She wrote “I suffered a bit of postpartum depression. You’re not alone or crazy, ladies!” Hayden also revealed that, at 5’2″ tall (Google has her at 5’0″ while People says she’s 5’2″) “I was 110 pounds before pregnancy and 153 pounds by the time I gave birth!” I can relate to crazy pregnancy weight gain and postpartum depression. I don’t see how anyone can be happy after giving birth and then getting woken up randomly every few hours to care for a newborn, but that’s oversimplifying the situation.

Here are some images from Nashville [via Getty]. I didn’t realize that Hayden’s character goes on Regis & Michael too! I will have to watch that episode.

Hayden Panettiere on PPD: ‘Women need to know that they’re not alone’

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Hayden Panettiere on PPD: ‘Women need to know that they’re not alone’