Last week, the Little Fires Everywhere star was a guest on Jameela Jamil's I Weighpodcast, where she opened up about experiencing "severe" postpartum depression.
“After each child, I had a different experience,” she told Jameela. “One kid, I had kind of mild postpartum, and one kid, I had severe postpartum where I had to take pretty heavy medication because I just wasn’t thinking straight at all. And then I had one kid where I had no postpartum at all.”
“We don’t understand the kind of hormonal roller coaster that you go on when you stop nursing," Reese continued. "No one explained that to me. I was 23 years old when I had my first baby and nobody explained to me that when you wean a baby, your hormones go into the toilet. I felt more depressed than I’d ever felt in my whole life. It was scary.”
The 44-year-old shares two children, Ava, 20, and Deacon, 16, with her ex-husband, Ryan Phillippe. She also shares a 6-year-old son named Tennessee with her husband, Jim Toth.
During the interview, the actor recalled not having any "guidance or help" during her postpartum depression. Instead, Reese said she “white-knuckled back” to herself.
“I think hormones are so under-studied and not understood,” she explained. “I kept reaching out to my doctors for answers. There just isn’t enough research about what happens to women’s bodies and the hormonal shifts that we have aren’t taken as seriously as I think they should be.”
"I have deep compassion for women who are going through that. Postpartum [depression] is very real," she declared.
Listen to Reese's full interview with Jameela here.
