Seven months after Laguna Beach star Lo Bosworth welcomed daughter Nellie with husband Domenic "Dom" Natale, she detailed her experience with postpartum depression.
Lo Bosworth is shedding light on her mental health.
Nearly eight months after the Hills alum welcomed her daughter Nellie with husband Domenic "Dom" Natale, she shared that she hasn't had a "tidy ending" while navigating her postpartum journey.
"I had postpartum depression," Bosworth, 39, wrote in an Aug. 23 Substack post. "I have been honest about my postpartum the entire way through. The recovery, the medical stuff, the days that were obviously hard."
However, she recalled how difficult it was for her to admit that she had been struggling with postpartum depression (PPD) since she had delivered a healthy baby and was surrounded by a strong support system.Â
"I knew I didn't feel great, but I really didn't want it to be PPD," she recalled. "I kept looking for reasons why I'd feel bad that possibly, maybe, wasn't PPD. And I found them, certainly."
Bosworth—who shared that she penned the personal essay after the death of PPD survivor Hayden Panettiere, as well as the ongoing trial of Lindsay Clancy, whose legal team argues that she had postpartum psychosis when she killed her three kids—initially blamed her retained placental tissue and Nellie's milk allergy as the only causes of concern.
"Both of those things were real. Both of them almost certainly contributed. I am not dismissing them," she emphasized. "But I was not thinking clearly about my health. I was looking for permission."Â
"I was a woman with a healthy baby and a good life and a partner who shows up, and I did not think I had an acceptable excuse for feeling the way I felt," she continued. "If I could point to a complication, then I was not weak, I was reacting normally to something hard. That version I could live with."
Through the help of medical professionals and her family, however, Bosworth has made major improvements to her mental health.
"I am doing significantly better," she noted. "I have a psychiatrist and a husband and people I can call, and I want to say that plainly too, because I do not think we should only be allowed to talk about this from the far side of it, tidied up and finished."
And the journey is far from over for the Laguna Beach star.
"I am seven and a half months out, I am in treatment," she wrote, "and I still catch the old instinct kicking in, reaching for the list of reasons."
She continues to remind herself and other women who are going through their “own list of reasons” to give grace during such a transformative chapter.
"You do not need one," Bosworth noted. "Nobody is asking you to explain yourself. You are allowed to just be sick, and this is one of the more treatable things that can happen to a person, and the sooner you say it out loud to somebody who can help, the sooner it stops."
