Hayden Panettiere, Postpartum Depression: Actress Suffered From PPD After Giving Birth, Says 'Women Need To Know That They're Not Alone'

Hayden Panettiere has opened up publicly about her postpartum depression as a way to bring awareness to the condition and let other women who suffer know they're not alone.

While on "Live! With Kelly and Michael" on Monday, the 26-year-old "Nashville" actress explained how following the birth of her daughter, Kaya Evdokia, she went through the same emotional scare that her character Juliette Barnes went through, according to E! News.

"I can very much relate," she told hosts Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. "It's something a lot of women experience. When [you are told] about postpartum depression you think it's 'I feel negative feeling towards my child; I want to injure or hurt my child.' I've never, ever had those feelings. Some women do. But you don't realize how broad of a spectrum you can really experience that on. It's something that needs to be talked about. Women need to know that they're not alone, and that it does heal."

She went on to explain how a lot of people misunderstand the condition and think it's "not real" or "not true" or that it's "made up in their minds." "They brush it off," she continued to say. "It's something that's completely uncontrollable. It's really painful and it's really scary and women need a lot of support."

She and her fiancé, Ukranian boxer Wladimir Klitschko, 39, had their daughter in December 2014, according to People. While she thinks childbirth is amazing and praises women for being able to do such a thing, she joked that she wishes there was a way to put this all on her husband, especially since she hopes to have four kids.

"Women are amazing," she added. "We do something that no man can do on this planet. I mean, we grow a human being in our body!"

She even explained how Klitschko used to suck his stomach in all the way so she could put her pregnant belly against his "so he could feel when she was moving." "He wanted to feel what it was like to have baby as close to him as it was to me," she said. Strahan was in awe over this. "You put it that way," he said. "It makes me wanna cry."

While this is the most she's opened up about her postpartum depression, earlier this month she did briefly tell Us Weekly about what she had gone through. "I suffered a bit of postpartum depression," she said in her "25 Things About Me" feature. "You're not alone or crazy, ladies!"

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Hayden Panettiere, Michael strahan, Wladimir Klitschko, Nashville, Heroes, Heroes Reborn