Britney Spears has detailed her grueling mental health struggles following the birth of her two sons, Sean Preston and Jayden James.
In her new memoir, “The Woman in Me,” released Tuesday, the “Toxic” hitmaker said that the constant media attention on her and her two then-infant sons made her postpartum depression reach a new level.
“Unfortunately, there wasn’t the same conversation about mental health back then that there is now,” she writes in the book.
“I hope any new mothers reading this who are having a hard time will get help early.”
“Because I now know that I was displaying just about every symptom of perinatal depression: sadness, anxiety, fatigue,” said the popstar, who shares both sons with her ex-husband Kevin Federline.
Elsewhere in the tell-all memoir, the “Gimme More” singer explained the reason she shaved her head in 2007.
Britney, 41, said the drastic move was a way of combating the ongoing commentary over her appearance — but admits the decision cost her autonomy.
Recalling how she was “out of my mind with grief” at the time, the mom of two wrote, “I am willing to admit that in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of pressure from paparazzi, I’d begin to think in some ways like a child.”
“With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom,” she shared. “Flailing those weeks without my children, I lost it, over and over again. I didn’t even really know how to take care of myself.”
Soon after, Britney was placed in a 13-year conservatorship, helmed by her dad, Jamie Spears.
Britney recalled being told she was “too sick to choose my own boyfriend and yet somehow healthy enough to appear on sitcoms and morning shows, and to perform for thousands of people in a different part of the world every week,” back in 2008.
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“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up, I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager. Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back,” she writes.
“But under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.”
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