Mena Suvari recently said that she is struggling with postpartum depression “every day”, more than a year and a half after the birth of the first child.
The “American Beauty” The 43-year-old actress told Rachel Bilson on her Big Ideas podcast, which aired Wednesday: “All I’m doing for the next month is checking my hormones. It’s very real.”
Suvari, who has spoken openly about drug addiction and sexual abuse as a child, said she doesn’t want to “sugarcoat” what she’s going through now, saying mothers are expected to “do your job, but I want to help others. I don’t think , that it doesn’t do anybody any good if I sit here and act like I’m perfect and act like I’m fine.”
She said everyone is just trying to “survive and do the best we can and we have to help each other.”
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Mena Suvari said that after giving birth in 2021, she suffers from postpartum depression every day.
(Stephanie Keenan/Getty Images for NET-A-PORTER/LaQuan Smith)
She said that along with therapy, she has a “strong group of friends,” works with holistic practitioners, and gets hormone tests and blood work to learn more about her body.
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The 43-year-old said she remembers sitting on her balcony after giving birth gave birth to a son Christopherin April 2021, saying, “I have to get out of the house. I have to get out of the house.’
Mena Suvari gave birth to a son in 2021.
(Getty Images)
Her husband and 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 married Michael Hope in 2018, and the couple welcomed their first child in 2021.
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She said she was frantic, thinking, “I have to do something for myself, but I can’t leave.”
Suvari says she still struggles with understanding that she doesn’t need to be “present.” [her son’s] facing 24/7 to grow a good person because of my fear.”
Mena Suvari and husband Michael Hope got married in 2018 and welcomed their first child in 2021.
(Getty Images)
She added that when she was pregnant, she “wholeheartedly” thought she could have a “whole” water birth, but she had a 24-hour home birth, then 24 hours at the hospital with an epidural staff, “and then I ran out emergency caesarean section”.
The actress said she didn’t want to “take all these things” the doctors advised and said she was “high like a morphine pop when they [took her] baby,” adding that her husband was able to deliver their “son skin-to-skin.”
“I still suffer from it,” she said.
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Suvari added: “And I have a right to these emotions. As mothers, we have a right to these emotions. And just because I have a wonderful baby who is perfectly healthy, my husband is wonderful, and we’re out of the hospital, I still feel as if I’m allowed to hold a place to grieve that I wasn’t born.”
