26 Celebrity Moms Share The Ugly Sides Of Parenting That Not A Lot Of People Talk About

"I love my kids more than anything," Hilary told Refinery29. "I cannot imagine not being a parent. But I don't always like them. I'm constantly cleaning up after them and they're both always running in two separate directions and it's absolutely exhausting. It's also the best, most rewarding thing."

“I didn’t [think] it would take my body so long to heal," Cardi told Vogue. "I thought six weeks was gonna be good enough. No, bro, my ass is broken, this baby broke my ass. ... Doing a tour with Bruno Mars in, like, the biggest arenas and I didn’t want to go on tour and not be able to dance or perform properly, not be able to get choreography right, because my body is extremely weak right now. Like, so weak. That postpartum shit is really real, y’all.”

"My current alarm clock is the blood-curdling screams that I wake up to," Kristen told Us Weekly. "I bolt down the hallway thinking that someone's fallen out of their crib or broken their arm or, I don't know, drowning in the sink, and then they're just like 'Good morning, Mommy!'"

"No, this is not a pregnancy Before picture," Aja wrote on Instagram. "This is the After. After days of labor. After experiencing what felt like my insides being ripped apart, no lie. After experiencing the unimaginable beauty of childbirth, this is what is left behind. This Gorgeous Body! So in celebration of myself and my body for 'Doing the Damn Thing,' I wanted to share this photo. No make up, no editing, no filters (and you know I love a filter!)...Just Me...a woman in awe of her Body and her Baby!"

"Last week was not easy for me," Serena wrote on Instagram. "Not only was I accepting some tough personal stuff, but I just was in a funk. Mostly, I felt like I was not a good mom. I read several articles that said postpartum emotions can last up to 3 years if not dealt with. I like communication best. Talking things through with my mom, my sisters, my friends let me know that my feelings are totally normal.

It’s totally normal to feel like I’m not doing enough for my baby. We have all been there. I work a lot, I train, and I’m trying to be the best athlete I can be. However, that means although I have been with her every day of her life, I’m not around as much as I would like to be. Most of you moms deal with the same thing. Whether stay-at-home or working, finding that balance with kids is a true art. You are the true heroes.

I’m here to say: if you are having a rough day or week--it’s ok--I am, too!!! There’s always tomorrow!"

"Children are fucking crazy," the actress told Glamour, back when she and Ashton Kutcher only had one child, daughter Wyatt. "They're also suicidal. Like, at the park, certain jungle gyms have an opening for older kids to jump out of. She's 19 months; she can't jump. She just walks off it as if she's on a pirate ship."

"I didn't expect to be so comfortable handing my child off to a nanny without getting any of her information," Ali told Paste Magazine. "As soon as she arrived at my house, I threw my baby in her arms and went to Target. She gave me her driver's license a week after — she was like, 'Uh, you should probably have my address, since you gave me the keys to your house and your child.' And we were like, 'Oh, yeah, that's probably a good idea.'"

"You haven't seen your vagina in months, even though it's all her fault you're in this situation," Olivia told Shape magazine about those first weeks of motherhood. "Now that you can finally confirm that she is, in fact, still there, she isn't the gal that you remember — and would rather you back off and give her some space (and an ice diaper) for the time being, thank you very much."

"Anytime I see someone pregnant, I just pray for them," Kelly told People. "[Pregnancy] was literally the worst moments of my life. I'm not kidding — I wish I were that girl that [had good memories of pregnancy]. But no. Nope. Don't miss it."

"It’s definitely difficult to find balance," Halsey told Extra. "I think that’s a common thing working moms share, no matter what your job is. I want to work really hard so he’s proud of me, but I also want to spend every single second cuddling him."

"When I had my girl, Luna, I would kind of vent and complain that she didn’t feel like she was connecting with me," Chrissy told SheKnows. "I felt so sad that she wasn’t connecting with me, because I’m her mother and I spend so much time with her. I’m nursing her, I’m doing everything I can for her.

"I had my little boy and he wasn’t that way. And that was really tough for me to go through, just because of other mothers telling me that’s the way it was going to be," she said. "I was taught that this little boy would want nothing but his mommy, and that didn’t happen with me. And that’s when I started to realize, slowly, that there is no rhyme or reason. You just never know."

"I wish someone would’ve told me how hard breastfeeding really was," Ashley wrote on her personal blog, Frenshe. "You see your friends who are new moms feeding their babies make it look so easy. But no one tells you how hard it really is. I think there’s this pressure around the subject of breastfeeding, and that those who do it are the best moms, but that’s not true. Our journey started on day one in the hospital when Jupiter was having trouble latching."

"Anyone that says or thinks [using a surrogate] is just the easy way out is just completely wrong," Kim told Entertainment Tonight. "I think it is so much harder to go through it this way, because you are not really in control. And, you know, obviously you pick someone that you completely trust and that you have a good bond and relationship with, but it is still ... knowing that I was able to carry my first two babies and not, you know, my baby now, it's hard for me. So, it's definitely a harder experience than I anticipated just in the control area."

"Those little things people might not think about," Megan said on The Kelly Clarkson Show. "Where normally you would just want to be hibernating with your child, you can't do that, because you're juggling all these other things as well. You don't want to lose opportunities, and also, there is that thing in this industry of like, 'Well, are you giving up? Are you just a mom now?'

There's this weird pressure, which also then creates guilt. You go to work too soon to satisfy those people, and then you have the guilt of, I shouldn't have gone back this soon. Now I'm a bad mom. My baby will always have this imprint on them. I've done something wrong. The stress from both sides is really intense. Shame, guilt, all those things."

“I felt like a zombie," Gwyneth told Good Housekeeping. "I couldn’t access my heart. I couldn’t access my emotions. I couldn’t connect. 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.”

"I think the most stressful thing for me is balancing work and life," Beyoncé told Elle. "Making sure I am present for my kids — dropping Blue off at school, taking Rumi and Sir to their activities, making time for date nights with my husband, and being home in time to have dinner with my family — all while running a company can be challenging."

“Like my mother before me, I made the difficult decision to cut off that romantic relationship with the father of my child, not just for my sake, but also for that of my baby boy," Taraji wrote in her memoir, Around the Way Girl. "With that separation, my forever man, my first love was no more and my dream of building a family with him was over. In so many judgmental eyes, I’d become another statistic: a baby mama. But my becoming a single mother was about making a sound parenting decision that would ultimately save our lives.”

“The thing about parenting is you never know if anything you’re doing is working," Pink told People. "That’s been the most humbling thing for me. In my head, I sound amazing and then I turn around and [my daughter’s] eyes are completely glazed over. I have no idea. We’ll see.”

“#breastfeeding my son Cree was very challenging,” Tia wrote on Instagram. “I just didn’t have enough milk and that was okay. However, with my daughter #cairo I was determined to try again and I’m so happy I did. I researched, looked to the #breastfeeding community for guidance and had an incredible breastfeeding consultant. I was able to #breastfeed #cairo for 13 months. Trust me, it was not easy. I had #mastitis in the first few months. Cairo also has a lip tie making it a little challenging. However, we did not give up! To all the #mothers who couldn’t breastfeed. Don’t beat yourself up. The most important thing is that your baby is fed, protected and loved. 💕 #wegotthis”

"You're going to get advice from a lot of people and you can take bits and pieces, but you know innately what your child needs," Lucy told Today. "You should trust that. Don't beat yourself up for making decisions about things that may or may not work. It's an experiment in life, and you're a part of that."

"It’s so hard to believe that today was my actual due date," Ayesha wrote on Instagram. "Our little man decided to make his grand appearance super early at 36 wks completely healthy and for that we are forever grateful! It’s been an interesting three-ish weeks settling in to being a family of 5! The girls have been but a dream. There have been lots of ups and downs though on my end. Wrapping my head around the fact that he was already here, struggles with nursing(which I hadn’t experienced in the past) and of course coming to the realization that I do in fact only have two hands and what seems like half a brain 😌😆. Just keeping it real, you lose a little bit with each baby and it never comes back ahah! I’m full of emotion today and just trying to soak in all of this new baby goodness because time feels like it’s flying already! Anyone else can’t get enough of that new baby smell?!"

"After we got home from the hospital, I didn’t shower for a week, and then John and I were like, 'Let’s go out for dinner,'" Emily told InStyle. "I could last only about an hour because my boobs were exploding. When the milk first comes in, it’s like a tsunami. But we went, just to prove to ourselves that we could feel normal for a second."

"In 2016, my doctor, Kelly Baek, a no-nonsense reproductive endocrinologist in L.A., gave it to me straight: 'Your best chance for a healthy baby would be surrogacy,'" Gabrielle wrote in her new book, You Got Anything Stronger? "I had been through an adenomyosis diagnosis and more miscarriages than I could confidently count, and all I could do was nod. I was not ready to do that. I wanted the experience of being pregnant. To watch my body expand and shift to accommodate this miracle inside me. I also wanted the experience of being publicly pregnant. I would shake off the distrust society has for women who, for whatever reason — by choice or by nature — do not have babies. I had paid the cost of that for years, and I wanted something for it."