Olivia Munn has been through a lot over the past few years as she battled bilateral breast cancer, which required her to undergo five surgeries — including a double mastectomy. It is one the toughest journeys a person can go through but for the actress? She felt dealing with postpartum depression was harder than cancer for her.
In an interview with SELF on Thursday, Olivia got candid about her mental health struggles after welcoming her and husband John Mulaney’s son Malcolm in 2021. The couple also has a daughter, Méi, who came into the world via surrogate in September. Olivia told the magazine that “it was devastating for” her “not to be able to carry [Méi]” as she “loved carrying” their son. However, the postpartum experience with her first child was “brutal.”
One month after Malcolm was born, that is when the anxiety started. Olivia “could not make any breast milk.” No matter what she did or who she saw, it was not happening for her, and that “kicked off the anxiety.” She recalled:
“I saw—I’m telling you—three lactation coaches. I did the vitamins, the water, the heating…. It would take me all day long to fill up just one bottle. I remember my mom was visiting. [I had left a bottle of] breast milk on the counter. I go in and I’m like, ‘Where’s the breast milk I left?’ And she goes, ‘Where was it?’ I said, ‘It was right here.’ She goes, ‘Oh, I cleaned up everything and I threw it away.’ I cried so hard. I was so mad and upset. She just said, ‘Well, John threw the dog food away.’ John was like, ‘Wait, what? What are you doing?’ That just made me laugh.”
However, things continued to get worse for Olivia. The former Daily Show correspondent said:
“My eyes pop open at 4 a.m. I’m gasping for air. I get the tightness in my chest, and it’s like that all day long. It felt like the end of the world…. It was like when you watch a horror movie—the worst, scariest horror movie you can think of—that’s how my body felt.”
It was so bad that Olivia would “sometimes hold John’s arm from room to room,” adding:
“It was physical, almost as if I had sprained my knee.”
Jeez. At the same time, The Newsroom alum said she “was feeling very depressed” when she “hadn’t lost the baby weight” and “nothing was fitting.” Sadly, she began to compare herself to other moms who just had a baby:
“I would see people on social media, people I knew had babies around the same time. I reached out to some of them. And I’m like, ‘How are you in these Valentino shorts and this crop top just running around LA and having the energy to take all these beautiful pictures?’ I didn’t even have the ability to fake it. I didn’t have the energy to fake anything they were faking.”
Moms are unfortunately faced with so much pressure to return to their pre-baby bodies or feel back to normal again. Ugh. For Olivia, she just had a really rough go with postpartum and feels it was “more difficult than going through cancer.” She explained:
“When you stop breastfeeding immediately, your hormones drop, and postpartum can come in like a tornado. And I didn’t clock any of that and I didn’t tell anybody about that. Then it was like I fell off a cliff, and I was just falling and falling and falling and falling.”
So heartbreaking. Olivia has been through so much, and we applaud her for her continued honesty with everything. Reactions, Perezcious readers? Let us know.
To learn more about postpartum depression, CLICK HERE or HERE.
[Image via Olivia Munn/Instagram,TODAY with Jenna & Friends/YouTube]
Related Posts
