Entertainment

15 Celebs Get Real About How Hard Pregnancy & Childbirth Really Are

EntertainmentPublished Mar 15, 2017
By Jacqueline Burt Cote
olivia wilde pregnant

oliviawilde/InstagramThere's no question that having money and fame can make a lot of things easier, but even celebrities can't escape the harsh realities of pregnancy and childbirth! And while some famous moms might go to great lengths to make it seem like the whole process is ultra glamorous, others aren't afraid to tell it like it is (and those are the ladies we love best!).

From swollen ankles and cravings to unbelievably painful contractions, these admirably honest celebs on our list have all opened up about the challenges involved in becoming a mom -- and you'll definitely be able to relate!

1/15
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Blake Lively
Xavier Collin/Image Press/Splash

Blake Lively

You haven't known heat until you've been heavily pregnant in the middle of summer! "It should be illegal to be pregnant in New York in July," mother-of-two Blake Lively told Jimmy Fallon of her second pregnancy. "I'm going to make my water break just to cool down."

"Everybody says 'how are you feeling?' but they don't really want to hear how you're feeling," she added. "They don't want you to complain." 

Ugh, why do they even ask??

2/15
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Kim Kardashian
kimkardashian/Instagram

Kim Kardashian

Kim Kardashian proved that prenatal water retention is no joke with this painful-to-look-at Instagram post. 

"I just don't think pregnancy and me really agree with each other," the reality star and mother-of-two told E! News.

"I'm really not complaining, I'm just being honest and being honest about [it]. I hate it. You know pregnancy is not for me ... You know I've heard stories forever about how amazing pregnancy is from my mom and Kourtney, and that's just not the case for me, and I'm not going to sit here and lie and act like it's the most blissful experience. It's awful."

Speak your truth, girl!

3/15
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Olivia Wilde
oliviawilde/Instagram

Olivia Wilde

Mom-of-two Olivia Wilde spoke for weary pregnant ladies everywhere with this tweet:

"Baby brain is real. I should not be permitted to operate heavy equipment, including iPhones."

See, it's not all in your head (so to speak)!

More from CafeMom: 15 Celeb Mom Pics That Prove Parenting Isn't Glamorous for Anyone

4/15
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Kristen Bell
Emmerson/Splash News

Kristen Bell

Not everybody bonds with baby in utero, as mother-of-two Kristen Bell told Flare magazine.

"I kept saying to Dax in all sincerity during my pregnancy, 'I just don't know how I'm going to like her as much as I like the dogs.' I was being serious," Bell said before she became a mom. "Because I f--king love my dogs; they are my children."

She continued, "I love people the more I know them, and I didn't know her. It could've been a water bottle in my belly, that's about how connected I felt to her during my pregnancy .... But within about 24 hours after she came out, my hormones reset, and they reprogrammed my feelings about her."

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Kelly Clarkson
James Higgins/Splash News

Kelly Clarkson

Being a mom is amazing, but the journey to motherhood is sometimes not so amazing, as Kelly Clarkson (who suffered from severe morning sickness) knows.

"Even though I want another baby, I don't want to be pregnant again," she told Closer after her first pregnancy. "It was the worst experience of my life. I didn't feel attractive, either. You hear people taking about a pregnancy glow, but I had no glow!"

Well, looks like she came around to having another anyway!

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Christina Applegate
Splash News

Christina Applegate

Like so many moms, Christina Applegate was dismayed to learn that pregnancy doesn't exactly live up to the "miraculous" hype.

"I love making a person ... but it's hard. They don't tell you everything," she said on Lopez Tonight. "'It's a miracle of life, you feel like a flower the whole time.' It's, like, bullsh*t. You feel like a fat-ass, you are exhausted." 

More from CafeMom: 11 Celeb Mom-Daughter Moments That We Can Totally Relate To

7/15
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Miranda Kerr
Nate Beckett/Splash News

Miranda Kerr

Pain-free childbirth is a nice idea, but for some moms, it's just not a reality ... and model Miranda Kerr is one of those moms.

"I actually thought I was going to die at one point and left my body," she told Australian InStyle of her son Flynn's birth.

"I was looking down on myself -- the pain was so intense."

"I kept thinking, 'How do women do this?' But if other women have done this, I can do it too. I was determined."

YOWCH.

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Chrissy Teigen
chrissyteigen/Instagram

Chrissy Teigen

Sometimes, pregnancy is just about giving into the inevitable.

"I have come to realize that at some point in the day, I will order and consume a pizza so it might as well be in the morning," Chrissy Teigen tweeted while pregnant with her daughter Luna.

Makes sense to us!

9/15
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Kate Winslet
Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

Kate Winslet

There's tremendous pressure on women to have natural births, but it's just not always possible -- which was the case when mom-of-three Kate Winslet gave birth to her daughter, Mia.

"I've never talked about this. I've actually gone to great pains to cover it up," Kate (here pregnant with her third child) told Gotham magazine of her first pregnancy with her daughter, now 16. "But Mia was an emergency C-section. I just said that I had a natural birth because I was so completely traumatized by the fact that I hadn't given birth. I felt like a complete failure. My whole life, I'd been told I had great childbearing hips. There's this thing amongst women in the world that if you can handle childbirth, you can handle anything. I had never handled childbirth, and I felt like in some way that I couldn't join that 'powerful women's club.'"

Hopefully this powerful mom now knows that childbirth is childbirth, any way that it happens!

More from CafeMom: 16 Celebrities the Internet Mom-Shamed for Their Parenting

10/15
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Amy Poehler
Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage

Amy Poehler

Everybody knows that pregnancy hormones can make you more emotional, but just how emotional can come as something of a shock. Even comedian Amy Poehler was a weepy mess:

"Oh, my God, I'm crying at everything lately," she said during her pregnancy with her son Archie. "I'm watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, and I was crying so hard. There's no shame in that. I'm crying at everything. The wind will blow a branch and I'm like, aw, nature."

11/15
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Zooey Deschanel
Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

Zooey Deschanel

Pregnancy is supposed to be a time when you can indulge your cravings, but it's also a time when you have to give up a lot of your favorite things (like, a lot of them). Zooey Deschanel, who is now pregnant with her second child, mourned the temporary loss of caffeine and sushi on Jimmy Kimmel Live:

"You can't eat so many things when you're pregnant! If I was vegan, I'd just be like ... ohhh. You can't have sushi. You can't have cheese that tastes good. You can have a little bit [of coffee], but I would have, like, four cups a day. And now I can have a half cup, which is a joke! It's a total joke!"

12/15
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Megan Fox
VIPix/Splash News

Megan Fox

So many of us aspire to give birth without the aid of an epidural -- but once those contractions hit, it's another story.

"I was screaming for an epidural when Brian was driving me to the hospital because my water broke on its own," actress Megan Fox said of her oldest son Noah's birth. "It was level orange alert pain."

"It hurts so bad. It was so intense. And I thought I was gonna be really tough and make it, I was gonna labor to like 8 cm ... but the first contraction that I got was horrific!"

More from CafeMom: 23 Celeb Moms Openly Breastfeeding Like It's NBD (Because It's Not)

13/15
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Zoe Saldana
Xavier Collin/IPA/Splash News

Zoe Saldana

Not everyone bounces back from giving birth like nothing ever happened, and mom-of-twins Zoe Saldana had a particularly rough time:

"In some cases more than others, your body experiences a kind of trauma through childbirth that is difficult to explain unless you've had that experience," she wrote in a Facebook post. "My case was like that, everything from my thyroid to my platelets crashed."

Glad she's doing better now!

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Adele
Instagram/Adele

Adele

There's truly no end to the bizarre things that happen to your body when you're expecting -- poor Adele literally grew a beard when she was pregnant with her son Angelo!

"When I got pregnant, I had so much testosterone in me that I grew a beard," she told a concert audience in Scotland.

"I only cropped it last night. It's actually true. I'm not telling a joke. I actually have a beard, but I'm proud of it. I call it Larry."

Gotta have a sense of humor!

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Jessica Simpson
John Salangsang|LEP|Splash

Jessica Simpson

If you ask Jessica Simpson (and a lot of other moms), pregnancy is 1 percent gestation, 99 percent perspiration. 

"People always say that pregnant women have a glow," Simpson told People when she was pregnant with her first child, daughter Maxwell. "And I say it's because you're sweating to death."

She continued, "I think they just tell pregnant women they're glowing to make them feel good about themselves, because everything makes them a little bit emotional."

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