Hayden Panettiere has opened up about her heartbreaking postnatal depression battle before relinquishing custody of daughter.
The star has said that she wished she was told more about the condition before giving birth to her daughter Kaya who is now eight, after previously confessing the commentary surrounding her child's custody arrangements are "so misrepresented".
The 33-year-old detailed how she has struggled with substance abuse in the past and her post natal depression caused her to drink more alcohol.
"I thought there was something seriously wrong with me, so I thought, "Fireball will fix this—duh!" And it didn't. It does for a moment, but then it makes everything worse. And then it hurts for you.
"You're like, 'I should be able to get over this all by myself'," she told E! The Rundown.
The Nashville star went on to speak about the difficult time that she experienced after giving birth to her daughter.
Hayden said: "I wish somebody told me that that was a possibility, told me it's OK if you birth your child and you're not immediately like, 'Oh my god, I love you more than anything in the entire world!'
"It's OK and not abnormal if [your baby] comes out and it's a blob, and you're like, 'Oh my gosh, this is like a crazy little creation that I'm going to love when I get to know you.'"
Hayden shares Kaya with her ex-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko, 47, who is a former two-time heavyweight boxer champion, whom she dated from 2000–2011 and 2013–2018.
Klitschko got custody of Kaya amid Hayden's battle with postpartum depression and alcohol abuse - something the actress opened up about last year.
"The idea that I’m a person who would just easily throw out my child, give away my child," Hayden told host Jada Pinkett Smith during an episode of Red Table Talk.
"The comments that people made, or things that they assumed about my situation with my daughter were just so…heartbreaking," she continued.
"There was a cover of a magazine, I was walking through the airport, it said something like, ‘Why Hayden chose to give up her daughter.’ I was just like, this is so misrepresented. People are like, ‘How dare you, you’re a horrible mother, I could never do that to my child.’ So it was tough and it took me a long time to be able to talk about it."
She added how one reason she didn't speak up earlier is that she didn't want to "upset" the person who had "control" of her young daughter, presumably meaning Klitschko.
Klitschko eventually moved back to his native Ukraine with Kaya, but she has been sent out of the country since Russia's invasion.
Hayden has posted on her social media in support of the country and for her "friends and family" living there when the war broke out as well as confirming that her daughter was "safe".
Klitscho has gone on to enter the war with his 50-year-old brother Vitali who is the mayor of Kyiv, who also was a heavyweight boxing champion.
Hayden's younger brother Jansen Panettiere passed away in February aged 28.
He was found dead in his apartment in Nyack, New York and reportedly died "from an enlarged heart".
