Yahoo Finance Ayesha Curry Just Spoke Out About Her Battle With Postpartum Depression
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Ayesha Curry, 32, just spoke out about her battle with postpartum depression.
She says it took her years to realize how becoming a parent had affected her and shared why she turned to plastic surgery for a quick fix.
Now, the mom of three is in recovery and looking back on what she would have done differently.
In a brand new interview, Ayesha Curry is opening up about her long battle with postpartum depression. During a recent episode of the Because Life podcast, the mom of Riley, 9, Ryan, 6, and Canon, 3, reflected back on that difficult period in her life and shared what she would have done differently.
After the birth of her second child in 2015, Ayesha said she "felt like a failure" because she stopped breastfeeding Ryan when she was 6 months old. “Now, I can say without a shadow of a doubt [that] I had postpartum depression. But I didn’t know what that was at that time," she explained.
Many women experience the "baby blues," or feelings of sadness and worry that tend to affect new moms for a few days after having a baby. Postpartum depression (or PPD), on the other hand, is a more serious form of depression that occurs after childbirth. It can be caused by a new mom's hormone levels, including a drop in estrogen and progesterone or a drop in hormones produced by the thyroid gland. Worries about being a new parent (and, usually, a lack of sleep) can also factor in, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Around one in eight women experience symptoms of PPD, according to the CDC. Symptoms can range from a sad and "empty" mood to a loss of energy to problems concentrating, making decisions, and remembering information. PPD can last up to a year, but it is treatable and can be managed by going to therapy or taking medication.
Ayesha explained that part of the reason why she didn't know she had PPD was because the condition wasn't discussed in her family. “It’s not anything we talked about with our moms," she said. "It was this invisible thing. They didn’t experience that? I don’t know. But it was pretty bad when I look back at it.”
She also added that she's “really, really good at hiding [her] feelings, trying to make everyone else OK and suppressing all of the things.” Meaning, Ayesha didn't ask anyone else for help or seek treatment for her depression.
"It came in the form of me being depressed about my body," she told Working Mother back in 2019. "So I made a rash decision." She had a breast augmentation in 2016 to cope with the emotions she was feeling. She later described the surgery as the "worst decision" she could have made, per Us Weekly.
"The intention was just to have them lifted, but I came out with these bigger boobs I didn’t want," Ayesha said. "I got the most botched boob job on the face of the planet. They’re worse now than they were before."
The surgery led Ayesha to develop "normal depression," and she began taking medication. "I would never do anything like that again, but I’m an advocate of if something makes you happy, who cares about the judgment?" she told Working Mother.
Looking back, Ayesha realizes just how far she's come since then. “It’s been a journey,” she told her sister-in-law, Sydel Curry Lee, on Because Life. “It was the worst three years of my life. I feel like I lost three years. Life started to become blurry. When I look back on that time, I was always tired, I was always saying I was sick, I always just wasn’t much fun to be around.”
Now, she's back to balancing her kids and her professional projects. And she feels more confident than ever. “It makes me feel like I can take on anything,” Ayesha told Working Mother. “The little things that used to seem like problems aren’t problems at all anymore. Things roll off my back more easily.”
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