Olivia Munn Battled Postpartum Anxiety for Almost a Year After Son's Birth
“Postpartum is really difficult,” Munn tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story. After welcoming her son Malcolm, now 2, with comedian John Mulaney in November 2021, “I was not prepared for the kind of postpartum that I had. I had heard about postpartum depression. I had never heard about postpartum anxiety.”
Category
✨
PeopleTranscript
00:00 Postpartum is really difficult and I was not prepared for the kind of postpartum that I had.
00:09 I had heard about postpartum depression. I had never heard about postpartum anxiety.
00:15 And it was incredibly difficult. On a scale of one to ten, I would put my postpartum anxiety at a hundred.
00:25 It was truly the most challenging thing. I mean, I went through something challenging
00:34 this past year, but I don't think it compares to what I went through postpartum.
00:38 It was about a month after I had the baby that I woke up out of nowhere.
00:48 It's 4 a.m. my eyes pop open and I just start breathing like I can't breathe.
00:57 My chest is tight and it stays like that all day long. And it was like that every day for almost a year.
01:06 I woke up at 4 a.m. my eyes pop open and I take that breath and it doesn't stop all day long.
01:16 There would be days where I would have to be clenching onto John's arm and walking from room to room.
01:22 I just couldn't manage. And I didn't have, thankfully, any intrusive self-harm thoughts
01:33 or anything negative towards my baby at all. I know a lot of women deal with that and
01:39 my heart goes out to them because there are just feelings and thoughts you can't control
01:44 for some reason when you're postpartum like this. And I struggled with that so much, but I was able
01:52 to be there and be happy. It's just I couldn't breathe the whole time. And it just eventually lifted.
01:58 It just, it lifted. And then, you know, I put on over 60 pounds with my pregnancy. I've been told 35 is
02:09 the ideal number. I went way above that. And so the weight didn't just come off of me. And, you know,
02:18 I took some more time to start to work out and to eat in a more healthy way after my postpartum lifted.
02:29 And then I started feeling like myself again. And I started feeling better. And then the diagnosis.
02:37 And then understanding that the diagnosis means that my body is going to change yet again.
02:43 And I really just didn't have a moment to catch my breath. I didn't, I haven't really felt like I've been
02:53 back in the body that I knew before. But that's okay for me. It truly is. I feel so happy that
03:07 I got myself through it. That, you know, if I have a few scars and dents and, you know,
03:14 bathing suits look different on me now, like that's okay. And I'm proud of myself for what I went through.
03:22 And, you know, it really, it's a very profound journey to find out
03:35 how much strength and resilience I have. It's more than I thought I had.