Brittany Cartwright is “trying to enjoy” her postpartum body after welcoming son Cruz — but exclusively told Us Weekly that self-love is “hard” amid comparisons to her Vanderpump Rules costars.
“I have friends like Lala [Kent], who literally looks like she doesn’t have a baby two days later. I mean, she is a freaking queen,” the reality star, 32, explained on Wednesday, May 5. “I don’t even know how, but my body is completely different. It’s going to be a long journey for me to get back to my weight.”
The Bravo personality has “definitely” been experiencing pressure from her social media followers, she added. “When I was pregnant, I got so many mean comments about what my weight gain was,” Cartwright explained. “I was being heavily compared to Stassi [Schroeder] and Scheana [Shay] and Lala. … I’ve always been bigger than them, but my weight has always fluctuated and stuff. So it was just hard to see all those comments about my weight stuff when I was healthy and the baby was healthy.”
The Kentucky native, who gave birth to her and Jax Taylor’s now-1-month-old baby boy in March, said that she “definitely cried a lot” amid body-shaming from Instagram trolls. “You’re already so emotional. And then, like, I was in [coronavirus] quarantine, I was home, so I was looking at my phone more than I should have. … There were times when it made me ashamed of how I looked, and I shouldn’t have felt like that.”
In November 2020, the then-pregnant star addressed comments about the size of her baby bump. “Some of y’all are just sad and I wish you happiness someday,” Cartwright captioned a mirror selfie at the time. “I’m going to enjoy my pregnancy no matter what the trolls say.”
She posted a paragraph on her Instagram Story describing the differences in bumps at 16 weeks, reading, “Believe it or not, some women don’t really show at 16 weeks pregnant, while others have pronounced bumps. The wide variety of baby bumps can be attributed to everything from a woman’s size and shape to whether this is her first pregnancy or her second, third or fourth. Whatever you do, don’t compare your 16 weeks pregnant belly to anyone else’s.”
Cartwright continued documenting her pregnancy progress via Instagram. She was the third of the cast members to give birth after Schroeder, also 32, welcomed Hartford, 3 months, in January, followed by Kent’s daughter, Ocean, 1 month, arriving in March. Shay, 35, gave birth to Summer, 1 week, in April.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi
