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Ivanka Trump Battled Postpartum Depression: It Was an ‘Emotional’ Time for Me

Ivanka Trump opened up for the first time about her battle with postpartum depression in an interview with Dr. Mehmet Oz airing Thursday, September 21.

Ivanka Trump
Ivanka Trump

“With each of my three children I had some level of postpartum … depression,” the mom of Arabella, 6, Joseph, 3, and Theodore, 18 months, revealed during a taping of the Dr. Oz Show. “It was a very challenging emotional time for me.”

The first daughter, who is married to Jared Kushner, said the disorder left her feeling like she was letting everyone down. “I felt like I was not living up to my potential as a parent, or as an entrepreneur, or as an executive,” she told Dr. Oz. “I had such easy pregnancies that in some ways the juxtaposition hit me even harder.”

Related: Donald Trump's Family: Kids, Grandkids, Wives and More

When asked why she decided to speak out now, the 35-year-old fashion designer responded that it wasn’t something she had planned on discussing. “But you asked me a question and . . . it’s incredibly important and look, I consider myself a very hard-charging person,” Trump said. “I am ambitious, I’m passionate, I’m driven, but this is something that affects parents all over the country.”

Postpartum depression is a very real and often debilitating condition, which affects 1 in 8 women. “Symptoms can include feeling sad, weepy, anxious, hopeless, angry, inadequate, guilty, suicidal, unable to sleep, unable to wear, with scary intrusive thoughts about harm coming to the baby,” Karen Kleiman, director and founder of The Postpartum Stress Center, previously told Us Weekly.

Related: Celebrity Babies of 2017

The key is identifying the disorder early, said Kleiman: “The longer a woman waits to get help, the harder her symptoms can be to treat and the longer it might take for her to recover.”

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