Chrissy Teigen shut herself away in the home she shares with husband John Legend while struggling to cope with post-partum depression.
Chrissy, 31, gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Luna Simone Stephens, last April (16), and quickly began experiencing symptoms of the condition, which affects between 10 and 20 per cent of new mothers.
“I couldn’t figure out why I was so unhappy,” she writes in the April (17) issue of Glamour magazine. “I blamed it on being tired and possibly growing out of the role: ‘Maybe I’m just not a goofy person anymore. Maybe I’m just supposed to be a mom.'”
The model also blamed her mood swings on having to live in a hotel while renovations on her home were finished, but still felt depressed and exhausted after moving back.
Chrissy struggled to leave the house and was so tired she “couldn’t muster up the energy to make it upstairs for bed”.
The American beauty adds, “John would sleep on the couch with me, sometimes four nights in a row. I started keeping robes and comfy clothes in the pantry so I wouldn’t have to go upstairs when John went to work. There was a lot of spontaneous crying.”
She and her musician husband, 38, were desperate to work out what was wrong and so visited a doctor, who diagnosed her with post-partum depression.
“John sat next to me,” she explains. “I looked at my doctor, and my eyes welled up because I was so tired of being in pain. Of sleeping on the couch. Of waking up throughout the night. Of throwing up. Of taking things out on the wrong people. Of not enjoying life. Of not seeing my friends. Of not having the energy to take my baby for a stroll.
“My doctor pulled out a book and started listing symptoms. And I was like, ‘Yep, yep, yep.’ I got my diagnosis: postpartum depression and anxiety.”
Chrissy, who married John in 2013, initially did not want to tell friends, but writes that she felt they “deserved” an explanation for her personality changes.
Although she is not quite at full strength the star insists her mental health has improved.
“I have really good days and bad days,” she adds. “I will say, though, right now, all of the really bad days – the days that used to be all my days – are gone.”
