Authors: Kendra Wilkinson
During these first couple of months all of my insecurities just came out and resulted in my not accepting help from anyone. I was so protective of him I basically told everyone, “Get away, I don’t need you.” I guess I’ve always needed to prove everyone wrong. And I thought I could do that by being the best mom, without any help. I’m so stubborn in that way. I had this persona—the blond girl with big boobs who’s been on TV, that stupid-girl character—and I wanted to break it once and for all. People think that’s the real me and therefore don’t trust me to do a good job with anything other than partying.
It was a nightmare for me. I feel like I’m going to have to live my whole life having to prove people wrong. I feel like I’m trapped in a body that’s not mine; on the inside I’m nothing like I look on the outside. I’m this former
Playboy
-type model but internally that’s not who I am as a person. Every time I leave my front door I feel like I’m zipping up a Halloween costume of someone that I’m not, just like a businessman has to wear a suit every day to go to work. I feel like I’m zipping up a whole body outfit, but my suit is blond hair with big boobs and cleavage. When I come home I feel like I am zipping down that same costume and stepping out of it.
Now that baby Hank is out of his infant stage, I have calmed down. The second he looked at me and said, “Mom,” I relaxed. I could go about my way and do some work now. I was okay leaving him with a nurse or nanny because I knew I had been there for him. My only goal was for baby Hank to look at me and call me mom. I didn’t want him to call anyone else that. I needed it for myself.
So my nanny advice? Get that help if you need it. Don’t be stubborn. I spent so much energy trying to prove that I could be a good mother and in order to do that, I had to do it all on my own. Ask for help. Take time for yourself to sleep or shower. Or eat a decent meal with veggies . . . maybe even sitting down at a table! I learned that you can’t be a good mother if you’re filled with hatred and anxiety and you’re not taking care of yourself. There’s a saying, “A happy mom makes for a happy baby,” and I agree with that 100 percent.
To those who had to deal with me during that time, I’m sorry. And thank you for standing by me.
On the flip side, a lot of celebrities claim they are doing everything for their baby but then dump their baby with the nanny. No one knows what happens behind closed doors. I see a lot of these Hollywood moms out till two
A.M.
or going out to dinners five nights a week or traveling around the world without their kid. In the tabloids, you see them strawberry picking, shopping, lunching during the day—everything is great! Am I to believe they installed the car seats all by themselves on their own? That they got up at 6:40
A.M.
and made their kid breakfast? Put them down for a nap at one
P.M.
? Brushed their teeth? All the while still having time for their Brazilian bikini wax, facial, hair-straightening appointment, and Pilates? Doubtful. I couldn’t do that. My goal has always been to avoid that. If being a mess and having all of my problems meant I finally got this whole mommyhood thing, then it was well worth it. I had a devoted and very involved husband, an assistant, and sometimes a nanny. But even with all of that, having a newborn turned me into a disaster. Anyone who emerges three months after a baby with clear skin, six-pack abs, and a smile is cheating you. It’s just not reality.
Now I’m okay and I can leave baby Hank with the nanny every now and then. I still don’t like to, but I will if I need to. I learned my lesson, and when I started to shoot my show when we moved to Philly with baby Hank, I knew I needed to bring in a nanny. I just couldn’t get everything done while taking care of the baby. Filming a show, being a wife, getting the new place together in a new city—it’s a lot! I needed help. Don’t ever be afraid to ask for help, just make sure it’s good help! So that’s when we brought in Genie again. I paid her to come to Philly, live in the hotel, and take care of baby Hank whenever I needed. We were paying her just in case because I didn’t feel comfortable hiring a random person in a strange new town. I knew myself and I needed someone to rely on. I didn’t care how much money it took. But I needed that freedom to travel or go to work for a night. She was basically my security blanket.
I couldn’t have wished for a better nanny, but it was still hard for me. I wasn’t too nice when it came to just handing him to her. For instance, if she put him in an outfit I didn’t like I would get mad and say things like, “I’m firing the bitch.” Deep down I knew I needed her. Looking back I know that was just my insecurity and that she was a great nanny. She could handle me so she stuck around. I could handle her so I kept her around. It was a unique relationship, an understanding, and it worked for us.
A few months later in the off-season when we moved back to L.A., I couldn’t see hiring another nanny, so again, I paid her expenses to come out and live with us, on top of her salary.
But the longer she stayed, the deeper my jealousy grew. My boiling point happened once when Genie was leaving through the front door and I saw baby Hank running after her. So I had to let her go. Even though she was the best nanny I could have ever imagined, I couldn’t handle the close relationship she had with my son. I stupidly couldn’t handle the attention my son gave her. At the time, I thought it was the best decision and felt like I finally had some control. But the good feelings were short-lived.
I gave her two weeks’ notice. I said, “You can stay with us and work or I will pay you if you want to leave now.” I didn’t want to keep dragging her around the country and pay her to live and work when ultimately I was too afraid to let her do anything. It was a waste of money. We still keep in touch with her, and who knows, maybe one day when Hank’s playing in another city we may need the help. Never ever let good child care slip away!
After firing Genie I was like, “Shit, wait, what do I do now?” I had no nanny. I was shooting my show and I was going through hell. I actually had my mother-in-law and father-in-law come in and help with the baby when I had to work and travel. I was spending more time with Hank’s mom and dad than Hank was. What would I have done without them? Looking back, my decisions and attitude toward Genie were so misguided. Thankfully I know that was a different time and a different “mind-set” for me. Sane, I’d never treat someone like that. I was not 100 percent sane.
My exhaustion and depression gave me a complete understanding of what it meant and what it took to be a mother. It’s nothing you can ever understand until you’ve been through it. Though I was never actually suicidal, I certainly thought about suicide. I knew full well I’d never actually do it; it was more on the level of pulling my hair out of my head, the Britney Spears–type stuff where you are just having a complete DEFCON 1 meltdown.
When I was younger I would cut myself, pull my hair out, self-mutilate, and do a lot of hard drugs to either numb the pain or feel the pain. There was a time when I was suffering from postpartum when I felt that low, and all I could think was, “Oh God, am I right back to that?” It was like I came to a fork in the road again and had to choose (though I know all too well you don’t choose it, it chooses you) whether I needed alcohol and drugs and a knife to cut me to make me feel better. But I didn’t need those things anymore, thankfully. There’s no place in my life for that kind of harm and selfishness; I have a family now.
That’s why I cry so much now. I don’t have the substitute for my downs. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t do drugs or harm anyone or myself. I’m sober to the point where I barely eat fried foods or sugar! Clean as can be. I don’t have anything to use to cope with my pain and depression anymore, just good old screaming and crying. Three weeks after having the baby, I felt just as low as I did the days when I was doing drugs and was suicidal. The only thing I could do was cry and scream, “Fuck you!!!”
Completely alone and unprepared, I had no one to talk to about it all. When you are down, it’s even harder to reach out and ask for help. Plus, people are afraid to ask the question “Are you okay?” Because it implies you’re not. Postpartum depression and anxiety is something that mothers have had to deal with for a long time but someone like me only talks about it after the fact. When it was happening I just kept it all bottled up inside. But it’s no more prevalent now than in the past, we just talk about it and discuss it more now. The only reason we are paying more attention to it now is because of the media and books.
What angers me the most as I look back is that during the post-birth checkups, none of the doctors asked me how I was feeling emotionally. They’d check my vitals, they’d check my reproductive system, they’d check my blood and my weight, but they never checked my brain. That should be part of the release process in the hospital. New mothers are taught to pump breast milk, so why can’t someone come in and pat us on our back and ask if we need someone to talk to? I wouldn’t even have cared if it was a doctor or a social worker, or even if someone just sent in another mom to say, “Hey, how are you handling all of this?” That would have made a world of difference. Instead the only thing I left the hospital with was about a dozen stolen diapers, a package of burp cloths, and as many “free” boxes of wipes as I could fit into my suitcase.
On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most severe, I would say my postpartum “depression” was an 8. That’s pretty bad if you consider that my drug days would be about a 10. I will never forget the pain that I was in back when I was younger and doing drugs. I wanted to end it all. My drug days and then the days of the postpartum are two times in my life where I could honestly say that people around me really had no clue what I was going through. Only a small percentage of people have been hooked on really bad drugs to the point where it threatened their life. But a lot of people have been through the severity of the postpartum that I had. I have had the unfortunate experience of going through both. But both times, I survived.
As I’ve said, Hank isn’t a therapist. I didn’t expect him to be one and I’m not going to treat him like one. I don’t expect him to give me the right answer and that’s not his job. If you are a wife or a mother and you have problems, don’t expect your husband to be able to fix them; go to a therapist. But one thing my husband and I were able to come together on is the conclusion that next time, for baby number two, I will definitely get help. I’m not going to be ashamed about getting the help that I need. I’m not going to be scared to ask for help. I will take the time and I will hire a therapist during and after pregnancy. Men do not understand these things and we shouldn’t ask them to. You better go to a professional when you can, during and after pregnancy, and that is what I’m going to do.
S
ometimes in life you just check out. Maybe you’re buried in work, maybe you are dealing with personal issues, or maybe (like in my case) you just had a baby. I had checked out of real life for a couple of months. Calls went unreturned, messages went unanswered, priorities shifted. It’s kind of like a temporary leave of absence from life. I wasn’t consciously avoiding the outside world, but there was no way I had time for anything other than breast-feeding and changing diapers. I knew at some point it was time to reemerge, but it wasn’t something I could control. I’d get back in the swing of things as soon as time allowed me. For me, that was getting my body and my brain in synch. My eating habits were horrible, my workouts were nonexistent, and my mothering skills were average at best. If I couldn’t do the “normal” things in my daily life, how would I have time to socialize, work, and be “Kendra” again? It was just going to take time. Time not only heals wounds physically from birth, but it also heals mental wounds.
For one reason or another, things always work out for me. It’s not because I do anything right or make any of the right moves, but as always, one day things just changed. One day a long time ago I woke up and luckily got off drugs. One day I met Hugh Hefner, one day I met Hank, one day I had a baby, and one day I went to the doctor’s office for my six-week clearance, and when he told me I could go to the gym I came alive again. For me it always seems like I just need to make it to the next step and survive. It’s always about survival, whether it’s drugs, adolescence, depression, or scandal. All too many times I’ve been in situations where I could have given up and ended things, and yet, as long as I keep on pursuing that light at the end of the tunnel, things seem to work out. I know for me, quitting is never an option. In fact, I somehow end up better off because of it all.
I was still stuck at 140 pounds at my six-week clearance, thirty-five pounds more than my comfortable pre-pregnancy weight. I was all layered up because I wanted to sweat off the fat. I remember it exactly: I was dressed in three sweatshirt hoodies, spandex, and a couple pairs of sweatpants. I wanted to sweat those pounds off. But the second the doctor said I could work out, I had my moment of clarity. Green light! I headed right to the gym straight from the doctor’s office. I felt high for the first time in months.
I was still cut open down below, but I didn’t care. I walked into the gym and I beelined for the treadmill, my old friend. It felt like a long time since I had been on the treadmill, but I couldn’t have been more excited. As I stepped on, I thought, “I’m about to fucking murder this gym.” I put on some gangsta, ghetto-ass hip-hop music, like Lil Jon, Lil Scrappy, and Dr. Dre, and I just started sprinting. “Ahhhhh, Kendra is back!” That was the day that brought me back to life.
I was just so happy to be running and be out of the house and be listening to rap music instead of lullabies and nursery rhymes. I had my identity back, and that is the one thing I needed. I needed to put my headphones on and listen to some gangsta music. My pulse quickened to the beats and I remembered who I was. For thirty minutes, I wasn’t a mom. I was just a chick on the treadmill trying to sweat off some pounds. I was back!
When I first got on the treadmill, I ran harder and better than I ever had in my entire life. Even though I hadn’t run in several months, I was sprinting like I was in the greatest shape of my life. I felt like Forrest Gump. I could have run across America, I had so much energy and motivation. I felt like that was the way to be me again. I had a destination but I knew I couldn’t get there overnight. So every time I ran, I ran more than I ever had in my life. I felt great.
I felt so good I went back the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day. It became a routine. The second Hank got back from practice I was going to the gym for thirty to forty-five minutes. I was going to murder the gym, then going to the tanning salon in the middle of winter and getting my tan on. It was like I had been stuck in this black hole and then one little trip to the doctor triggered me right out of it.
My first point of focus was my mental well-being. But as soon as I got my smile back, I started paying attention to the rest of my body. I knew I had put on weight, and I knew I didn’t look that good or feel that good anymore. So I needed to fix it. I wasn’t worried about my belly—that’s where my baby came from and I wasn’t surprised to see it had gotten bigger. I was honest about the fact that my stomach wasn’t going to go back to being a six-pack again any time soon; I’m not Gisele Bündchen. I wasn’t stressing about that. I was stressing about my back. I hate my back. It’s always been a “problem spot” but being pregnant made it that much worse. It’s boxy. And my boobs got too big and made me look bigger than I actually am. Especially when my milk came in. Then my neck area got big, so combine that with the fact that my back exploded and I just looked like a giant Volvo. I gained a lot of weight in my back, upper and lower. Most women hate their arms and legs, but I hated my back. From top to bottom and left to right (especially under my armpits—my traps), I felt like I had wings.
Although I was sweating it out daily on the treadmill and painted over the rest with a spray tan, I couldn’t shake the baby weight no matter how many miles I ran or what diet plan I was on. Let me tell you, there’s nothing babyish about baby weight. This stuff is a monster. I had Freshology delivering all my meals, I was running on the treadmill, I was barely drinking, and I was breast-feeding. Losing weight should have been easy! But contrary to some of the Hollywood moms who flaunt their bikini bodies just weeks after giving birth, it wasn’t.
Five months into motherhood, I still couldn’t shed the weight. I was feeling better about myself and more optimistic since getting back to the gym, but the number on the scale still wasn’t budging. I ended up throwing away the scale because it became my enemy! I weighed about 140 pounds the day the baby came out of me, and five months later, I still weighed 140 pounds. This really started to anger me because mentally I felt healthy. My postpartum depression was gone and I was working out, dieting, and trying new things like smoothies and new exercises. Other than motherhood, weight loss was my number one focus, but you’d never have been able to tell that by looking at me.
I was technically “cured” of my postpartum depression, but the fact that I couldn’t lose a pound was starting to get to me. But I didn’t want to give up; nor did I want to get fatter either. I started to think about other options because I thought there was no hope. I was doing everything I could and not losing the weight. I was working out twice a day in 120 degree heat and hadn’t lost a pound yet. I didn’t know what to do.
So I tried throwing up my food, but bulimia just wasn’t my thing. I gagged myself with my fingers and the food came back up. I was desperate for something, anything, to work. At this point, nothing that anyone recommended actually did the job. So desperate times called for desperate measures. But I immediately thought, “Well, that was horrible and uncomfortable. This isn’t for me.” The thought of vomiting up my food made me even more nauseated than the actual act. I wanted to lose weight but not that badly. I forced myself to do it, but it’s not me; I’m not a person who was made to stick my finger down my throat, thank God. It actually made me sicker.
Then I considered surgery and lipo but figured that was a last resort. I was young; I shouldn’t have needed liposuction at this point. Sometimes you just stare at yourself in the mirror and think “Surgery could make this all go away.” But I was looking to try other options before getting to that. Something had to work! So I took diet pills and started to wear Spanx, but neither was working. The Spanx actually made me look (and feel) bigger, because in my head it was just an extra layer of material making me look even thicker. People would come up to me and say, “It’s okay, it’s only been three months.” That bugged me, but it bugged me even worse when they said, “It’s okay, it’s only been five months.” Meanwhile I would see pictures of Kourtney Kardashian in the magazines, and her body was already back to normal after a few months. I kept thinking, “What is wrong with me? Why can she do it and I can’t?” I couldn’t understand what I was doing wrong. We had kids three days apart and she was back to her pre-baby body while I hadn’t lost a pound.
It got to the point where I knew I was becoming a poster child for struggling to lose the weight when businesses wanted to hire me for their weight-loss campaigns. That meant I was still “fat,” because they wanted to portray me as the “before,” hoping I’d get to the “after.” They all submitted me proposals and gave me time limits by which I had to lose the weight! When I started to shed a few pounds there was a diet pill manufacturer that wanted me to work with them, and they wanted “before and after” pictures. So I took my “before” picture and sent it in, but they said I wasn’t fat enough in the photos! They wanted me even heavier. So this company actually told me to eat a ton of bread and whole bags of chips and drink a lot of soda and then take a picture so they could get their good “before” picture. I tried to look fat and I gave them a good “before” picture, but ultimately my team and their team thankfully figured out I wasn’t a good fit.
Diet pills, bulimia, plastic surgery—nothing seemed to be right for me. So when we were in Philadelphia I went to the gynecologist just to check things out, because at this point I just wanted to make sure I was healthy. I suspected and maybe even hoped that something else was going on so I would have an explanation for why I couldn’t lose weight despite my best efforts. So I went and got my blood drawn as part of the usual checkup.
I left the doctor and went to an interview for MTV’s
When
I
Was
17.
And during the interview, Eddie comes running over with the cell phone screaming, “It’s Hank! He says it’s an emergency. He’s been calling everyone looking for you.” So Eddie gives me the phone, and I shout to Hank, “What’s wrong?!” Hank says, “Kendra, do you know what’s wrong with you right now? Your doctor just called me and told me what you have. Your blood test shows your thyroid levels have plummeted. It’s the lowest level they have ever seen.”
The doctor said my thyroid levels were ten times less than what they should have been. They were worried about it getting worse and sent me to take another blood test to double-check it. New test, same result. It was obviously a real and growing problem, so that same day she sent me to an endocrinologist.
The endocrinologist started talking to me about my problem and asked me if it had been in my family, which it hadn’t. He asked me if Hank Jr. had any problems; I said no. Doctors don’t get me nervous because I always assume they exaggerate; I think if there’s a problem it will present itself. But this was making me nervous because it was actually presenting itself. I had been exercising, eating healthily, and getting further and further away from the day I gave birth, yet I couldn’t lose any weight. So something was obviously wrong. The doctor explained the science of my body, specifically the role of the thyroid in controlling hormones, metabolism, the brain, and the pituitary gland. And half of my thyroid had shut down, so basically my body was working at only a fraction of the capacity it was supposed to. My metabolism had all but shut down. I was dieting and exercising just to maintain my current weight and keep up my energy. But no matter how much I did, I was never going to lose weight. He said to me, “Frankly, I’m shocked you don’t weigh two hundred pounds and that you are not passed out in bed right now completely tired.”
So when I moved back to L.A. shortly thereafter, I got in touch with a new doctor and got on a new diet. This doctor prescribed me 180 milligrams of Synthroid, a prescription synthetic thyroid hormone intended to replace a hormone that is normally produced by your thyroid gland. I’m now on only 100 milligrams, but I’ll have to take it for the rest of my life. The Synthroid regulates me and keeps my level at a livable state. It started working immediately, and within two weeks I had lost about three pounds—three more than I had lost since giving birth! Five months after going through hell, I finally figured out my problem. Better late than never!
There was so much ridicule in the tabloids and on the blogs over my not having lost the baby weight, and yet what people don’t realize is that I was fighting a serious condition. Being in my body at that moment made me realize what other people go through, people who can’t lose weight, people born with genes that mean they are going to be big. I feel bad for them because I was stuck in that body despite my efforts. I felt so lucky that the right medication was going to help me fight it off. It was weird because I was used to being healthy. I’m used to fighting to be a size zero, but here I was fighting something bigger.
I took all of the doctors’ advice on what to eat and what to do, along with medication, and finally the weight started melting off. I started pushing myself so hard that I fainted a couple of times from working out. I just felt like I needed to do everything I could to make up for lost time; I didn’t want to give up. I was so proud of myself for finding out what it would take to get over my problem. I didn’t care that I hadn’t lost weight anymore. I felt proud that I had figured out what was wrong with me and was trying to take care of it. Even if I never lost another pound at least I was getting healthy now. I remember looking at the mirror and smiling for the first time at my body. Even with the stretch marks, even with my fat rolls on my stomach, even with all of the uneven and unbalanced weight-gain areas, I remember thinking, “I’m well on my way to getting back to being Kendra.”
I linked this thyroid problem back to the postpartum depression immediately. I was such a mess for so long, and so many people think hypothyroidism is a joke; they don’t believe that this thyroid thing is real. But just like postpartum, the more you talk about it the more you hear of so many other women who are affected by it.