childbirth

Gwyneth Paltrow Says She ‘Almost Died’ Giving Birth to Her Daughter

Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Gwyneth Paltrow joined a recent episode of the podcast Armchair Expert to promote her new show, Sex, Love, and Goop, but the opening conversation found her discussing the land-mine field that is being a new mother. She also revealed that she almost died giving birth to her daughter Apple, who’s now 17.

It started when co-host Dax Shepard brought up a toe surgery he had, which prompted Paltrow to talk about the scars she has from C-sections she underwent for her two children’s births. “As you start to get older and … you need surgery or things age and a body part is different, there’s this weird mourning that happens,” she said. “My daughter was an emergency, it was crazy, we almost died. It was, like … not good.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “there’s a big scar across your body, and you’re like, Oh, wow, that didn’t use to be there. It’s not that it’s bad or you want to judge it; it’s just, like, Oh my God.”

This isn’t the first time Paltrow has talked openly about her pregnancy or new motherhood. During a Goop virtual summit in March, she confessed that she struggled with pregnancy and felt “lost” after giving birth to Apple. In May, she talked with Ciara about how important it is for mothers to “be supportive of each other” and “not to judge other mothers in their process and their decisions.”

With Shepard, Paltrow went on to talk about the criticism lodged against women for the decisions they make around parenting. “All the judgment around how you have a baby, do you breastfeed … are you not going to work — it’s, like, guess what? Whatever it is, it’s okay,” she said. “We have this weird thing going around … It’s past perfectionism. It’s like I can do this gargantuan task that’s superhuman. For what?”

Gwyneth Paltrow Says She ‘Almost Died’ Giving Birth