Chrissy Teigen, Serena Williams and other famous moms don't hold back on topics including postpartum depression and mom guilt.
Celebrity moms are getting ready to celebrate Mother's Day!
In honor of some of Hollywood's coolest moms, ET's taking a look back at how these famous matriarchs tackle parenthood's joys and challenges. From Chrissy Teigen's honest remarks on postpartum depression to Gabrielle Union's openness surrounding infertility, there's no shortage of maternal figures to acknowledge.
Keep reading to see how these famous moms are killing it at parenting.
Mom guilt:
Cardi B recently opened up to ET's Katie Krause about suffering mom guilt when she's away from her 9-month-old daughter, Kulture, whom she shares with her husband, Offset.
"I do experience that mom guilt, you know? She's here, but it makes me sad sometimes because it's like, 'Oh my gosh, all that traveling,'" she explained. "I know her sleeping schedule is getting a little messed up ... every single time that she gets on an airplane, it's all good until the landing. She starts crying, and I just be feeling so sad because I know the pain, you know, when your ears pop."
"And sometimes I wake up in the morning and she's in my bed and I just want to cuddle and [I can't]," she continued. "It is getting harder because she knows me. She recognizes more now and that's, like, you can just tell she wants me to be there. Sometimes, when she sees me leaving, she looks up and goes, 'B***h, where you going?'"
In a tweet back in July, Khloe Kardashian expressed a similar sentiment.
"The worst part is the mom guilt. It’s a real thing," she wrote in response to a since-deleted tweet from a fan of the hardest part of parenting. "You feel guilty at all times if you have to leave her side. Or really for anything."
Meanwhile, Serena Williams revealed that, while training for Wimbledon, she felt guilty for missing a major milestone in her daughter, 1-year-old Olympia's, life.
"She took her first steps... I was training and missed it," she tweeted. "I cried."
Speaking with ET last year, Williams further opened up about the difficulties of being a working mom while also making sure to spend as much time as she could with her little girl.
"Working motherhood is real. It's so real. But I have my priorities and Olympia is that," she said. "I'm never a day without Olympia. She's my priority, and every day I need to be home with her. I don't wanna miss any moments with her."
Breastfeeding:
Hilary Duff recently wrote on Instagram that she stopped breastfeeding because she "was going to break."
"Last week was my last week nursing Banks (my six month old) I am a working mom of two. My goal was to get my little girl to six months and then decide if I (and her of course) wanted to keep going," she shared, before explaining that the decision was made in large part because "pumping at work sucks."
Duff also explained that she wanted to open up about her decision because it wasn't an easy one to make, calling it "so emotional and hard."
"I thought about it ALL day everyday. It was a constant loop in my head. Weighing the pros and cons. And half of the time I wasn’t making any sense," she admitted. "It was about me, and not Banks at that point. I cried many times and felt so depressed while weening. I wasn’t myself at all. Something scary was hovering over my brain and my heart... the part of me that I know is smart and rational."
Earlier this year, Eva Longoria told ET's Leanne Aguilera that she breastfed her son, Santiago, on the set of Grand Hotel.
"It was fun," she gushed of having her little boy on set. "When I was directing, I had just had Santi and I was breastfeeding as I was saying action and running around. I thought, 'This will be easy. I'm not in front of the camera. There's no pressure to look amazing,' [but] it was so hard."
"I was like, 'What am I doing?'" she continued. "But he's grown up on the set. He's been on the set every episode. This cast is like his surrogate family."
Other working moms also breastfed on the go, with Kate Hudson feeding her daughter while working and Rachel McAdams taking a now-iconic pic of herself breastfeeding on the set of a photoshoot, a photo that Duff later recreated.
Infertility:
Food Network star Kathie Lee recently opened up on Instagram about the pressure she feels to get pregnant and how she's struggled to conceive after surgery and IVF.
"When people ask me when I’m getting pregnant, it hurts," she wrote. "It’s just a reminder that I’m not. When they say I look like I’ve gained weight, I have. I can’t exercise as much and the hormones have made me bloated."
"I know a family will happen for us, it is just going to be a different journey than we imagined," she continued. "We will keep working towards it. Someday we will have our happy new beginning and I pray any of you experiencing the same will have yours too."
Likewise, Jessie J has struggled with infertility, revealing last November that she can't have children.
“I was told 4 years ago I won’t be able to have children," she wrote on her Instagram Story. "I was also told I would need a hysterectomy immediately and to be put on medication. I refused the hysterectomy I’m off all medication through natural medicine and diet change."
"I am doing all I can to make it happen the best way my body will allow," she continued, insisting, "I will be a mother."
"I believe in miracles. But if it doesn’t happen naturally, then that wasn’t meant to be the journey," she added. "But a mother is within all of us. That inspires everyday. We are strong. Time will tell."
Additionally, Gabrielle Union has been incredibly open about her infertility struggles throughout the years, before finally welcoming a daughter, Kaavia, via surrogacy in November. Despite being thrilled about her daughter's birth, accepting surrogacy as her path to motherhood was not easy.
"I’ll see a pregnant woman and I just feel like, 'Damn,' you know? I’ll ask myself, 'Would my relationship with her be different?'" she recently told Glamour. "And then I go home and have a whole-a** baby."
As for surrogacy, Union likened the process to an "underground railroad of infertility."
"The only reason I heard about certain doctors or treatments or new technologies or new procedures -- whether that be diet or Eastern philosophy -- was through a whisper network, and mainly from women who did not look like me or who had a very different journey through life than I did," she said.
"So much of the Instagram life is creating these perfect illusions, right? People have kids -- even through surrogacy or IVF or whatever -- and the kids just appear. Rarely do we hear how," Union continued. "What was the journey? Without understanding what got to baby, it feels like easy and overnight. And that's not the case."
Union decided to open up about her struggles in the hopes of helping someone else going through the same thing.
"... I would never say that I'm giving anyone permission, but sometimes it takes somebody doing something to be like, 'Oh sure, I can talk about this. It has no bearing on my value, my worth, the validity of my motherhood journey,'" she said. "So I try to be as open as possible. I’m telling people the water’s warm. Dive on in."
Postpartum Depression:
Earlier this year, Christina Perry told ET's Keltie Knight that suffering from postpartum was "the hardest, it is the scariest, and the most challenging thing I've ever been through."
"I was suffering from postpartum symptoms, which happens to really every woman that gives birth. They go through a variety of symptoms -- in some it's a 10 and some it's a three -- but every woman sort of has these hormonal imbalances," she explained. "For me, the beginning was fine but then when I quit breastfeeding, I hit all of the postpartum symptoms."
After reaching out to her fans online, Perry said she was comforted by their support, which included meaningful conversations with "hundreds of women" online.
"I swear, I just felt so much better and not even in a cheesy way, but like, that was one of the most necessary things I needed to get through that very, very scary dark phase," she said. "Then I came out on the other end, and I was just so grateful to these women. A lot of them now I still just chat with, because I've already opened that thing and now we're just mom friends. But I feel like all women need that community and needed that tribe."
During a recent appearance on Today, Chrissy Teigen also opened up about experiencing postpartum depression after giving birth to her first child, 3-year-old Luna. Teigen and her husband, John Legend, also share 11-month-old Miles.
"It happened with my first one, with [my daughter] Luna. I just didn't know there was any other way to feel. I thought it was natural to be in this low point," she said. "I just assumed that was motherhood and no other way around it. Until people around me starting telling me they saw distinct changes in my personality that was really helpful to me. I wish I had this center where I was. It blows your mind that this center isn't everywhere really."
Teigen said Legend and her doctors were her "strength" throughout the process, and the "good group of people" who were "watchful" of her during her postpartum depression.
"I had really changed. It wasn't just being tired, it was being really sad and hard on yourself and down on yourself. It wasn't just the blues and a lot of us think it is the baby blues you are going through different things of course," she said. "… Speaking to the women made me realize just what a different feeling it is -- it's a unique experience that can be really tough. We encourage everyone to share their stories. Open up the dialogue so there is no stigma."
Back in January, Behati Prinsloo told Net-a-Porter that she suffered from postpartum depression after her first pregnancy with Dusty, 2. She and husband Adam Levine also share Gia, 1.
"After my first baby, I had a little postpartum depression and it was difficult to get back into normal life," she adds. "But after the second one, everything felt so much easier; it was easier for me to work out, breastfeeding was easier. No one pressured me to return to work, not even Victoria's Secret, who I was under contract with -- they never asked me when I was going to be back."
Raising Kids & Co-Parenting:
In a recent view on Kourtney Kardashian's website, she and Scott Disick opened up about co-parenting their three kids -- Mason, 9, Penelope, 6, and Reign, 4 -- while no longer in a romantic relationship with each other.
"I think the hardest part was when we both started new relationships, don’t you?" Kardashian, who previously dated Younes Bendjima, while Disick is still with Sofia Richie, said. "Because that caused fights between you and I about introducing the kids. I think that caused the most challenges. That was the time that you and I had our biggest [challenge], where we had to literally go to therapy to talk [and] to even get through [and] be able to communicate together."
"I think the biggest challenge was just trying to figure out how we separate our relationship as friends and parents and still be on the same page," Disick said. "And, what’s appropriate and what’s not and when to be able to talk to each other. In the beginning you set good [boundaries] and then we learned from that and got to a good place."
"I couldn’t imagine raising three children with somebody that I couldn’t speak to everyday," he added. "I feel like we’re just raising our kids how we would have raised them, whether we were together or not. And, just because we are not together, our kids should not suffer."
Meanwhile, Jessica Alba told InStyle that she makes mistakes "all the time" and has decided to be open about her failures with her three little ones, Honor, 10, Haven, 7, and Hayes, 1, whom she shares with Cash Warren.
I just want to live a full life and stay curious and challenge myself. I want my kids to see me push outside my comfort zone. And sometimes that means making mistakes and admitting them, which is especially hard in front of your kids."
"Whenever my kids ask me to find something, they’re like, ‘Mom, where’s my…’ you know, backpack, toothbrush, whatever. And I just say ‘Up your butt,’ and that’s probably bad parenting," she jokes.
Last May, Jessica Simpson told ET about the most rewarding parts of parenting. Since then, she has welcomed a daughter, 1-month-old Birdie. She and her husband, Eric Johnson, also share Maxwell, 7, and Ace, 5.
"The most rewarding part of being a mother is really just watching my kids grow," she said. "It's like, how much knowledge they have about life is just so meaningful to me, and how much heart they put into everything they do. There's just nothing like the innocence of a child."
