Honesty hour! Gretchen Rossi welcomed her daughter in July and is now sharing her breast-feeding struggles.
“This pic right here is how I imagined in my mind that breast-feeding would be — beautiful, peaceful, maternal, and glorious, me just calm and relaxed, looking and feeling great all the while bonding with my precious baby girl staring into her eyes while she feeds from my breast,” the Real Housewives of Orange County alum, 40, captioned a Thursday, August 8, Instagram upload. “Boy, was I ever wrong. Breast-feeding has been no where near this magical as I imagined in my head. I have cried so many times from being frustrated, from being freaking exhausted, from the pain and horrible sore nipples (as they literally scabbed over and or were bright pink from all the skin being rubbed off), from the guilt of feeling like, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’”
The former reality star added, “I took every class you could take, read so many books, did so much research and was determined to ‘push through’ the tough parts so I could give my baby girl the very best. But I quickly realized it just wasn’t that easy, and if I wasn’t at ‘my best’ I couldn’t give her ‘the best’ because my body wouldn’t cooperate or produce enough milk etc. This was my real and raw struggle.”
In the former Bravo personality’s Instagram pic, she gazed down at her 1-month-old, Skylar.
This isn’t the first time that Rossi has been candid about her motherhood struggles since welcoming her daughter with her fiancé, Slade Smiley. On Sunday, August 4, the Michigan native write about how anxious she felt leaving her baby girl at home for the first time.
“Even though she was with her grandparents (best people on earth for her to be with) I couldn’t stop thinking about her and missed her so much (even though it was only eight hours),” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “I was so happy when I got home last night and got to see her and kiss and love on her!”
Rossi has also been opening up the Date My Ex alum’s support during this transition. She gushed over Smiley, 45, last month, telling Us Weekly exclusively, “Slade has been the best support any woman could dream of. He is a rock of strength.”
