Lo Bosworth, the reality star known for The Hills and Laguna Beach, revealed in an Aug. 23 Substack post that she experienced postpartum depression after welcoming her daughter Nellie, and admitted she initially resisted accepting the diagnosis.
"I had postpartum depression," Bosworth, 39, wrote. "I have been honest about my postpartum the entire way through. The recovery, the medical stuff, the days that were obviously hard."
The post came nearly eight months after Bosworth welcomed Nellie with her husband, Domenic "Dom" Natale. Despite delivering a healthy baby and having a strong support system around her, she wrote that she struggled to admit she had postpartum depression, known as PPD.
"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 said she was moved to write the essay following the death of PPD survivor Hayden Panettiere and amid the ongoing trial of Lindsay Clancy, whose legal team argues she had postpartum psychosis when she killed her three children.
Looking for an Excuse
Bosworth wrote that she initially pointed to retained placental tissue and Nellie's milk allergy as the sole causes of her distress.
"Both of those things were real. Both of them almost certainly contributed. I am not dismissing them," she wrote. "But I was not thinking clearly about my health. I was looking for permission."
She explained that having what looked like a good life made it harder for her to accept how she felt. "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 wrote. "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."
Getting Treatment
Bosworth wrote that with help from medical professionals and her family, she has made major improvements to her mental health.
"I am doing significantly better," she wrote. "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."
She made clear the process is ongoing. "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."
A Message to Other Mothers
Bosworth said she wants other women going through their "own list of reasons" to give themselves grace during the transition into motherhood.
"You do not need one," she wrote. "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."
She urged readers not to wait. "Tell someone this week," she concluded. "Your OB, your primary, a friend who will make the call for you. It gets lighter. I promise you it gets lighter."
Bosworth first became known for starring on Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County before joining the cast of its spinoff, The Hills.
