Gwyneth Paltrow Talks Realistic Post-Pregnancy Expectations and Her Near-Death Birth Experience

According to a recent article from Page Six, Gwyneth Paltrow had a “crazy,” near-death experience giving birth to her now 17-year-old daughter Apple. “My daughter was an emergency, it was crazy, we almost died. It was not good,” she says on a recent episode of The Armchair podcast. “Anyway, there’s a big scar across your body and you’re like, ‘Oh wow, that didn’t used to be there.’ And it’s not that it’s bad or you want to judge it, but you’re just like, ‘Oh, my God.’”

Condemning social media for normalizing a skin-tight body immediately after birth, she continues: “Thank God there wasn’t Instagram when I had babies because now it’s like if I see someone, ‘Oh, I just gave birth two weeks ago and I have a completely washboard stomach,’ and I’m like, ‘Wow that’s not what I…and great—more power to the lady with the washboard abs, but it’s just like that is totally the exception now we’re being fed all of these other images of what we’re supposed to look like all the time—babies, no babies, whatever.”

The 49-year-old also highlighted the immense pressure that exists between women on the topic of formula-feeding versus breastfeeding. “We should all just be friends with each other instead,” she says on the episode. “Guess what, whatever it is, it’s okay. I feel like we also have this weird thing around. It’s past perfectionism. It’s like I can do this gargantuan task that’s superhuman and why? For what?”