Hilary Swank kept the early stages of her pregnancy with her third baby a secret until her social media announcement.
“I live in a very small town. It’s a town I grew up in, and everyone there has been so just
respectful of my privacy and it hasn’t leaked,” Swank, 52, said on the Thursday, October 22, episode of the “Question Everything” podcast. “Clearly, I don’t stay at home all the time. I was working up until about 17 weeks pregnant, so no one really knew on set either.”
She continued, “I’m a pretty private person, and there was no reason to really, I don’t know, say anything.”
Swank and her husband, Philip Schneider, announced via Instagram on October 14 that they are expecting another baby. (The couple already share 3-year-old twins, Aya and Ohm.)
“[My twins are] so excited,” she gushed of Aya and Ohm becoming older siblings. “My daughter is not a very ‘aw’ kind of girl. She likes to growl, and she really gets into her body, but I told her, and she went, ‘Aw, in there?’ She was so excited and, obviously, my son is too. They asked when the baby’s coming, and every time I leave the house [and] come back, they’re like, ‘Is the baby here?’ I finally said, ‘Well, the baby’s coming at Christmastime.’”
According to Swank, Aya and Ohm are so ecstatic to meet their baby sibling that they ask whether “it’s Christmastime yet” every day.
“They’re really excited. They see babies at restaurants, and they go up to the baby, and they’re like, ‘Can I tell you something? My mama has a baby in her belly, and she’s due at Christmastime,’” she gushed. “So cute.”
As Swank prepares for her new arrival, she has found that becoming a parent shifted her perspective on life and raising kids.
“I think, for me, being a parent who chose later in life has definitely been the right choice for me,” the Oscar winner said. “I think in my 20s and my 30s, first of all, I had my career, which was a baby that I really wanted to devote to. And now I have, thankfully, a career that I can pick and choose. I can choose my children right now, and I can give them and totally devote to them selflessly, but I also was able to do a lot of work on myself [beforehand]. I’m a very different parent now than I would have been in my 20s and especially my 30s.”
