Gwyneth Paltrow opens up about postnatal depression
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow arrives to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party, for the 84th Annual Academy Awards, at the Sunset Tower on February 26, 2012 in West Hollywood, California.
Gwyneth Paltrow has opened up about postnatal depression, saying she didn't recognize the signs and couldn't understand why she wasn't connecting with her son.
Paltrow, 39, reportedly told the TV show The Conversation with Amanda de Cadenet that she began experiencing the symptoms following the birth of her son Moses in 2006.
However, at the time she couldn't understand why she was struggling because she had felt so happy when her daughter Apple arrived in 2004, CelebrityBabyScoop wrote.
She said it was her husband, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who suggested that she was suffering from postnatal depression.
"I couldn't connect with my son the way that I had with my daughter and I couldn't understand why," she said on The Conversation. "I couldn't connect to anyone. I felt like a zombie. I felt very detached.
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"I just didn't know what was wrong with me. I couldn't figure it out. It never occurred to me. My husband actually said, 'Something's wrong. I think you have postnatal depression'. I was mortified. 'No, I don't!' And then I started researching what it was and the symptoms and I was like, 'Oh, yes I do'."
OnTheRedCarpet wrote that Paltrow, an Oscar-winner, married Martin in December 2003, having met shortly after Paltrow's father, with whom she was close, died due to complications from oral cancer and pneumonia.
Paltrow also told Cadenet that she felt like she never needed a man before her father died as he was everything to her.
Paltrow believes that "you never totally get rid" of postnatal depression.
She said she found it easier to cope after she opened up about her condition and hopedto help other sufferers by discussing it in public.
"That's why I talk about it, because even the awareness of it started to diminish it. Because I didn't feel like I'm dying or I'm crazy – period," she added. "It's like, 'Oh, this is a thing. This is a real thing and these are the symptoms and I have them all.'
"We think that it makes us bad mothers or we didn't do it right, but it's like, we're all in this together. I never understand why mothers judge other mothers It's like, 'Can't we all just be on each other's side?'"
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