New to nursing! Karina Smirnoff shard her breast-feeding experience as a new mom one month after welcoming her son.
“Breast-feeding was a whole shock to me,” the Dancing With the Stars pro, 42, revealed on Thursday, May 28, during NAMI and One Mind’s Stronger Than You Think virtual mental health event. “I’m like, ‘I’m going to be like a dairy cow. What?’”
The Ukraine native was “panicking” ahead of her baby’s birth. “I was thinking, ‘The baby’s going to be born and I’m not even going to know how to change a diaper,’” Smirnoff said. “Everybody’s like, ‘It comes instinctively. Don’t worry.’”
The dancer welcomed her baby boy in April. “She is doing well,” a source told Us Weekly exclusively at the time. “As a first-time mom, she’s a bit nervous but also excited!”
Later that same month, Smirnoff shared the first photo of her infant. “Welcome to the world Theo Gabriel!” she captioned her son’s Instagram debut.
Since becoming a parent, the professional ballroom dancer has learned “patience.” She explained on Thursday: “Every day you’re learning something. Every day, he is growing and he’s doing things today that he didn’t do yesterday. So that’s a whole learning experience in itself.”
The Famously Single alum has been living with her parents after feeling “anxiety” as a new mom. “I think when you are not used to living with your parents for a long time as an adult and then suddenly you are, wow, that’s a whole different set of skills that you have to attain,” Smirnoff said at the time. “And I love them to death, they’ve been so incredibly helpful and I wouldn’t be able to do it without them, but that’s 24-7 in closed doors.”
Smirnoff added, “I mean, you can always lock yourself in one of the rooms and put on the song that you like and the music takes you to a different place and then you come back out and everything is good again.”
