Hayden Panettiere‘s new book continues to drop bombshells!
In a new excerpt from This Is Me: A Reckoning, the 36-year-old actress opened up about her struggles with postpartum depression — and how she lost some opportunities in her career because of it. In the excerpt, obtained by The Cut, she revealed what exactly led to her postpartum depression, following the birth of her daughter Kaya Klitschko:
“I labored with Kaya for 14 hours and was in surgery for three hours after she was born. My blood wouldn’t clot during my C-section, so doctors had to close the blood vessels in my uterus to prevent me from bleeding out. I had seven transfusions and ran a fever the entire time.”
So horrifying! She continued:
“My uterus had become infected, and the antibiotics I’d been given during labor hadn’t been strong enough to lower my temperature. When I woke up in the recovery room, I was exhausted, disoriented, and racked with pain.”
So, so sad. She admitted she “needed a drink to function” following the experience, and even after rounds of “treatment” she still wasn’t feeling better. That ended up temporarily costing her the role she had on Nashville:
“The producers had no choice but to write me out of the script temporarily — something that killed me because I’d always prided myself on my professionalism — and I issued a statement about where I was going and why.”
Related: Hayden Addresses Claims She ‘Abandoned’ Daughter After Giving Custody To Ex
Luckily, Hayden says her “fans” and “the press” were nice to her:
“My fans and the press were hugely sympathetic — and I’ll always be grateful for that — but a part of my career I’d come to depend on suffered.”
This is when she says Neutrogena dropped her! After years of being an iconic face for the brand, she alleges her contract was cut because of her postpartum depression:
“Neutrogena canceled my long-standing contract, and it was yet another blow in a year that had given almost nothing else … I had postpartum depression, and it sucked. I wanted more than anything to get back to that place of happiness, but I didn’t even know where that place was anymore.”
WTF?!
She described having everything she ever wanted — a fiancé, a child, and a “great job” — but it still wasn’t enough to keep her happy. Which is totally understandable! Postpartum depression is no joke. It’s not something that just goes away because everything in your life seems “right” — it needs to be better understood, period.
But even so, Hayden said on the Jay Shetty Podcast Monday that she thought her comments on PPD was “the last thing that I thought they would ever fire me over”:
“When I got that call that Neutrogena wanted to fire me over that, my representative at the time said, ‘That’s illegal. You can’t do that’. And even though, you know, she saved the day that year, I know that that was going to be it, I was not going to be invited back the next year.”
On top of that, she says it broke her heart that no one reached out to see how she was doing after her contract wasn’t renewed. She’d worked with those teams for a decade — and she claims they did nada to see if she was okay! Ugh.
Watch for yourself around the 1:01:06 timestamp (below):
So awful. We can’t imagine how Hayden felt after this. Reactions, Perezcious readers?
[Image via MEGA/WENN]
