Bryce Dallas Howard Opens Up About Her "Postpartum Denial"

The Help star tells E News about her current pregnancy and the struggles she faced after her first child

By Bruna Nessif Aug 02, 2011 4:00 AMTags

Having babies is one heckuva roller coaster.

Lucky for Bryce Dallas Howard, she's been down this road before.

While doing a junket for her latest film The Help, out Aug. 10, the actress opens up to E! News about her second pregnancy and battling postpartum depression after the birth of her first son, Theo.

Radiating in a preggo glow, Howard tells us, "I feel privileged to be pregnant, and I'm gonna be honest, I'm a little nauseous."

Reassuring us that it's OK because this is only a sign of a healthy baby, the actress continues to explain that experiencing pregnancy the second-time around is in many ways easier because you know what to expect, even if there's a toddler at home stopping you from lying in bed all day.

"You're not on the Internet, kinda freaking out," she says.

One thing that really threw her for a loop when having her first child, was dealing with postpartum depression.

"I didn't realize that what I was experiencing was postpartum depression, I called it postpartum denial," Howard says. It wasn't until she read Brooke Shields' book Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression  that she realized she was experiencing the same things.

Afterward, Howard opened up about her battle on Gwyneth Paltrow's GOOP blog, which she describes as being a, "really therapeutic experience for me, because it allowed me to put words to my experience, which I hadn't done before and hadn't been able to do."

Watch the video to hear more of what Bryce Dallas Howard had to say about her journey through motherhood.