The actress got frank about her struggles (Picture: Getty)
Freida Pinto has opened up on her experience with postpartum depression, 13 months on from welcoming her baby son.
The Slumdog Millionaire actress has dismissed the idea of bouncing back because ‘you’re changed forever’ as she spoke up about the anxiety she dealt with that left her unable to even go outside.
‘I think it’s almost easier to talk about the physical level, but on a mental level and an emotional level, you can’t necessarily always explain anxiety and depression in words like “I feel pain in my knee, or in my lower back,” so it starts making that illness invisible, and because it’s invisible, it starts getting ignored,’ she said in a new interview.
The 38-year-old revealed that she began to suffer four months after the birth of her son with husband Cory Tran.
Freida initially thought that she had managed to escape postpartum depression after receiving assistance from her mum and getting plenty of rest and supplements in the first 40 days after labour.
They also used guidance from the ancient Indian medical system Ayurveda, one of the world’s oldest holistic healing practices, so the actress thought it was all ‘going to make me immune to any of the mental illnesses that come in the postpartum period.’
Freida welcomed her baby son last autumn (Picture: Jamie McCarthy/WireImage)
‘In some people’s minds, including some doctors, the postpartum period ends at six weeks or three months. That is completely false. Postpartum is forever,’ she told Vogue.
As she explained how the postpartum feelings had started to impact her only four months after the birth, she shared: ‘I stayed kind of hidden for quite some time; I wouldn’t even let myself go out and get fresh air because that’s how horrible I felt.’
Freida also said she felt she had not ‘given my body and mind enough credit for the hormone surges and the new changes and the pressures of going back to work and the anxiety that came with it’.
With husband Cory Tran and their son on a beach break (Picture: Instagram/freidapinto)
The mum-of-one then detailed how she ‘fell into the trap of listening to everybody and everything and found myself losing my instinct’.
However, she has since actively sought help after recognising the signs it was necessary as someone who has previously had therapy for anxiety.
The Hillbilly Elegy star has become known for being frank about the less glamorous side of motherhood with her social media followers.
Posting a photo of herself breastfeeding followed by evidence of an accidental eruption from her son, she wrote: ‘Keeping things real here with a little Instagram vs. reality moment from the early days of postpartum.
‘Being a mom is messy – literally – and sometimes, we just have to laugh it off.’
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Frieda and Cory secretly the knot during lockdown in 2021 after deciding to elope.
She’d been engaged to the adventure photographer since November 2019, after going public with their romance at the US Open in 2018.
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‘I stayed kind of hidden for quite some time.’
