Gretchen Rossi is extra thankful for her fiancé, Slade Smiley, after battling postpartum depression.
“Slade has been incredible,” the Real Housewives of Orange County alum, 40, told Us Weekly exclusively at Beverly Hills Rejuvenation Center’s Eternal Beauty book launch benefiting the American Heart Association on Thursday, September 26. “Slade’s just been truly incredible and the best dad, the best partner, like, I literally couldn’t have survived this without him.”
That being said, the former reality star went on to say that Smiley, 45, and her friends didn’t understand how much she was suffering at first. “They were like, ‘No, you’re fine, you’re fine,'” she told Us. “And I was like, ‘I’m not fine, I’m struggling.’ Everyone was like, ‘No, you’re killing this mom thing, you’re so good, you’re so great,’ but I was really struggling. It wasn’t until they saw the difference in me when I started taking CBD and how much happier I was. They were like, ‘Oh, you were hiding it really well that you were struggling.’”
The former Bravo personality, who gave birth to her 2-month-old daughter, Skylar, in July, first opened up about her experience with postpartum depression on Thursday’s episode of The Doctors.
“I was really struggling and having an internal conflict with the fact that I had this beautiful, amazing miracle baby, and I just was having a hard time compartmentalizing how to manage my life now with this new baby,” the Michigan native explained.
While her doctors recommended that she take prescription medication for her condition, Rossi “really didn’t want to go that route,” she admitted to Us.
“I just don’t like taking meds and we’ve had history of addiction in my family and it has really affected a lot of things,” she explained. “I decided to try the natural supplement CBD … before I went to pharmaceuticals. Two days, and I felt like a completely different person. I still am kind of in shock about it, honestly.”
With reporting by Kayley Stumpe
