Adele opened up in a new cover story interview with Vanity Fair about her battle with postpartum depression after the birth of her 4-year-old son, Angelo and whether she wants to have more children.
The powerhouse singer, 28, said she was hesitant to ask for help when she was struggling as a new mom back in 2012. “I had really bad postpartum depression after I had my son, and it frightened me,” she told the magazine. “I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was very reluctant … My boyfriend [Simon Konecki] said I should talk to other women who were pregnant, and I said, ‘F–k that, I ain’t hanging around with a f–kin’ bunch of mothers.’”
Eventually, she took Konecki’s advice and chatted with a friend, who happened to be going through the same thing. “One day I said to a friend, ‘I f–kin’ hate this,’ and she just burst into tears and said, ‘I f–kin’ hate this, too.’ And it was done. It lifted. My knowledge of postpartum — or post-natal, as we call it in England — is that you don’t want to be with your child; you’re worried you might hurt your child; you’re worried you weren’t doing a good job. But I was obsessed with my child. I felt very inadequate; I felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life,” she said. “It can come in many different forms. Eventually I just said, I’m going to give myself an afternoon a week, just to do whatever the f–k I want without my baby. A friend of mine said, ‘Really? Don’t you feel bad?’ I said, I do, but not as bad as I’d feel if I didn’t do it.”
The “Hello” songstress said she doesn’t want to have any more children, but she’s lucky because Angelo already has a half-sibling. Konecki, 42, has a young daughter from a previous relationship. “That’s my get-out-of-jail free card,” Adele joked.
While the 10-time Grammy winner, currently on her massive Adele Live 2016 tour, sells out shows instantly, she doesn’t enjoy touring and would rather be spending time with her family. “I’d still like to make records, but I’d be fine if I never heard [the applause] again. I’m on tour simply to see everyone who’s been so supportive. I don’t care about money,” she said. “All of my relationships are more important to me than any tour I’ll ever do. If my relationship with Simon or my relationship with Angelo started to flounder a bit now, I would pull out of my tour.”
The “Send My Love” singer’s relationship with her longtime boyfriend seems to be doing fine despite the demands of her hugely successful career. (Her 25 album, for example, was just certified diamond in the U.S., which means it sold an astonishing 10 million copies within a year of its release.) Adele gushed about his maturity, which she says is the key to their romance. “He’s not threatened by any stage of my life that I’m going for, and that’s an amazing thing,” she said. “It’s the most serious relationship I’ve ever been in; we’ve got a child together and we live together. After releasing my first album, all the other people I ever was with were so insecure about themselves — they couldn’t handle it at all. When I try to describe this to my friends they don’t always get it, because they go out with people that are our age, but Simon is already who he is, and I’m still becoming who I’m going to be. He’s confident. He’s perfect.”
