20 celebrity moms reveal what it was really like to give birth

“I was really looking forward to the whole rite of passage, giving birth perfectly present, unmedicated, in the way nature intended,” Pink told People in June 2011. But when do babies ever follow a plan? Pink’s daughter, Willow, was in the breech position, so the mom-to-be’s birth plan went out the hospital window. “We tried everything to turn her around. Turns out, this little girl had other plans—she is my daughter, after all.” Thankfully, the end result was a healthy mama and baby girl. “It all turned out perfectly in the end, even though it wasn’t what we intended, because she is healthy and happy and so am I.” 

Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard have very different versions of her unplanned C-section with daughter Delta. This is Dax’s: “You peek around the sheet and they’re lifting out the baby, but then you notice your wife is completely disassembled. I can see inside of her. I was like, ‘It’s a girl! Your liver’s out, I think! And those are definitely intestines. And she has your eyes. Oh my God, put her back together correctly!’ After seeing this autopsy, I would rather see a schoolbus drive out of her vagina.” But Kristen remembers it somewhat differently: “It was kind of a wonderful experience for me. While they were doing it, I actually thought, What else could we get done down there? Maybe lengthen the shins? I’ve always wanted to be like five foot seven. Just anything to keep the epidural flowing.”

Jessica Alba is big fan of hypnobirthing and sat down with us to talk about it in an interview: “It’s about being calm and breathing gently. Instead of pushing the baby out, it’s breathing the baby down. Your body naturally contracts and pushes the baby out. That’s what labour is. If you just allow it to do what it’s meant to do and if you can stay calm and open, then you’ll have an easier time with birthing—that’s the philosophy behind it. I did most of my labouring for my first child with hypnobirthing.” Her husband, Cash, admired her silent strength. “She didn’t make a sound,” he said.

Kate Winslet’s first delivery with daughter Mia (back in October 2000) left her feeling like a failure. “I’ve never talked about this,” she said in a candid interview with Gotham. “I’ve actually gone to great pains to cover it up. Mia was an emergency C-section. I just said that I had a natural birth because I was so completely traumatized by the fact that I hadn’t given birth. I felt like a complete failure. My whole life, I’d been told I had great childbearing hips. There’s this thing among women in the world that if you can handle childbirth, you can handle anything. I had never handled childbirth and I felt like, in some way, I couldn’t join that ‘powerful women’s club.’”

Beyoncé said she had a very spiritual experience birthing baby Blue Ivy: “I had a very strong connection with my child. I felt like, when I was having contractions, I envisioned my child pushing through a very heavy door. I imagined this tiny infant doing all the work, so I couldn’t think about my own pain. We were talking. I know it sounds crazy, but I felt a communication.” We’re wondering if she felt the same experience with the birth of her twins, Sir and Rumi, back in July.

Kim suffered from a potentially fatal condition called placenta accreta during her pregnancy with North and, because of that, had to deliver her baby six weeks early. And then her placenta didn’t come out. “My doctor had to stick his entire arm in me and detach the placenta with his hand, scraping it away from my uterus with his fingernails,” she wrote on her website. “My delivery was fairly easy, but then going through that was the most painful experience of my life! They gave me a second epidural, but we were racing against time, so I just had to deal.” Although she called her second pregnancy with Saint “the worst experience of her life,” she went on to say “Really, it is all so worth it when you have your precious baby in the end!”

It seems like Hilary Duff had a pretty tranquil experience when she gave birth to her son, Luca, in 2012. “It was very easy,” she said on Ellen. I went into labour at about one in the morning. I very calmly had my bags packed and woke my husband up after about three hours of walking up and down my hallway. Then I was like, ‘OK, it’s time to go. Let’s go now.’ We got in the car and drove to the hospital and that was it.” Wow, if only it was that easy for everyone!

Kate Hudson had a tough experience giving birth to her eldest son, Ryder, back in 2004. “I was going to get induced because the baby was so big. Then my hips weren’t opening and I wasn’t dilating. I was in labour. My contractions were two to five minutes apart and I couldn’t feel anything. The doctor said I could go home, but it was such a pain in the butt to get to the hospital because we were being stalked by photographers. We went in at midnight and I was like, ‘I am not going home. I just don’t want to do this again. Let’s just have a C-section.’ And so I got drugged up.”

Zoe Saldana gave birth to twin boys, Cy and Bowie, in November 2014. As you might imagine, giving birth to two humans can take its toll on your body. “In some cases more than others, your body experiences a kind of trauma through childbirth that is difficult to explain unless you’ve had that experience,” she said in a Facebook post. “My case was like that: Everything from my thyroid to my platelets crashed.” She added, “My body was really bent out of shape after the boys were born, but it was worth it.”

The famous singer-songwriter opted for a home birth when she and hubby, Mario Treadway, welcomed their son, Ever, on Christmas Day in 2011. “The experience was beyond pain,” she said. “It was a transcendental experience. I just went to this whole other world. I basically had to be the little soldier that I am and really focus on this new beautiful creature coming out of me.” She cautions others that, although it worked out for her, the choice for a home birth may not be a one-size-fits-all situation. “It’s quite possible to have a really amazing home birth. In my case, I have no regrets and would do it again, but in the same breath, it wasn’t the easiest experience of my life.”

Kristin Cavallari, former Laguna Beach reality star and mama of three, had relatively calm pregnancies, but she was in for a rude awakening when she gave birth to her first son, Camden, in 2012. After 10 hours of labour and 20 minutes of pushing, she and then-fiancée Jay Cutler welcomed their first-born. “The pain was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It was so painful but a different kind of pain because I knew we were going to meet our son. It was worth every minute, and I’d do it again.” And she did: two more times!

In an interview with Access Hollywood, Megan Fox revealed that the first time she experienced labour pain with her eldest son, Noah, it wasn’t what she expected it to be. “I was screaming for an epidural when Brian drove me to the hospital because my water broke on its own. It was level orange alert pain.” She added, “It hurts so bad. It was so intense. And I thought I was gonna be really tough and make it. I was gonna labour to like eight centimetres, but the first contraction I got was horrific!” Apparently, she had even asked a security guard at the hospital for an epidural because it hurt so bad. Sadly, he couldn’t help her.

For Victoria’s Secret supermodel, Miranda Kerr, the pain of labour was so bad that she had an out-of-body experience while she was giving birth to 10-pound son Flynn Bloom. “I’ve never been through so much pain, but I was totally present the entire time, focusing on my breath and meditating,” she told Australian Telegraph. “I kept thinking, how do women do this? But if other women have done this, I can do it, too. I was determined.” She goes on to describe the moment when the pain became unbearable. “I actually thought I was going to die at one point and left my body,” she continues, “I felt as if I was looking down on myself—the pain was so intense. Then he came out and we met, and it was the best thing.”

Many of us know Kourtney Kardashian’s birth story because we saw it all on TV (or later, on video). The reality-TV star famously pulled out each of her kids as she gave birth. Recalling the delivery of her daughter, Penelope, Kourtney said, “She was coming out and I was thinking, I should pull her! With [my] Mason, I had no idea I was going to do that. This time, I thought, This is what I’m supposed to do.”

Alicia Silverstone said that she almost enjoyed the process of her 27-hour labour with son Bear Blu: “The first 14 hours were almost sexy. The oxytocin was doing all this magic, and it felt amazing. And then it got less than amazing. It got really intense, as labour is.”

“We were in this little hospital in Africa when Shi was born,” Angelina Jolie told Vanity Fair of the birth of daughter Shiloh in May 2006. “I don’t think there was anybody else in the hospital. It was just a little cottage—just the three of us. It ended up being the greatest thing. I had a C-section, and I found it fascinating. I didn’t find it a sacrifice, and I didn’t find it a painful experience; I found it a fascinating miracle of what a body can do.”

“I gave birth in the bathtub,” Gisele Bundchen shared with People of her delivery with son Benjamin (born in December 2009). “[The] wasn’t painful, not even a little bit,” she said. “The whole time, my head was so focused on every contraction. The baby is closer, the baby is closer. So it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, what pain.’ It was, ‘With every contraction, he is getting closer to me.’” Not surprisingly, the avid earth mama said no to meds. “I wanted to be conscious and present for what was happening,” she explains. “I didn’t want to be anesthetized; I wanted to feel.”

Tina Fey had an eventful drive to the hospital on her way to welcome daughter Alice back in September 2005. “I ended up on all fours in the back of a taxi,” she recalls. The birth itself, though, was uneventful, thanks to drugs, which Tina swears she has never, ever taken before. “Once I got in the hospital, I very quickly accepted Stadol, which is a narcotic,” she said. “A lot of women would say it’s bad to do that because you are giving your baby a narcotic, but she’s fine. She’s really, really fine. When I woke up, somehow I was almost completely dilated and the nurses were congratulating me. Then I had an epidural and I was lucky that it was a good one and effective. I have never used any kind of recreational drug.” 

The Big Bang Theory star got super-candid about the birth of her son, Frederick: “The decision to have our second son at home, assisted by a licensed nurse midwife, turned into one of the most incredible, moving and profound experiences of my life,” Mayim Bialik wrote in a blog post. “Having our almost three-year-old son witness it from his highchair was equally powerful. Miles was seated in his highchair in our living room, calmly eating a bowl of granola, and my husband stood next to him, both of them watching me silently and intently as I was helped into a comfortable pushing position (the birth canal directed away from Miles, thank you very much). Three pushes later, Frederick slithered out and Miles was carried out of his highchair to cut the cord.

It seems that there was less magic and more pain involved for the former Sabrina the Teenage Witch star when she gave birth to her second of three sons, Braydon, in 2008. “I told my mom and my husband, ‘Don’t let me have [the].’ I kinda regret that one! But the thing is, the healing was so much faster. I didn’t have to get the drugs out of my system and I was moving around a lot more. I laboured at home for nine hours and then went to the hospital for an hour and a half—two pushes and he was out. When you’re feeling all that, you want to get that out as soon as possible, so you really work at it. You’re like, ‘I’m gonna push really hard, but I’m only doing it once.’” 

Read more: 17 celebrities who struggled with postpartum depression
19 times Pink was the coolest mom ever 22 celebrity moms who are damn proud of their post-baby bodies