Kristen Bell commemorated her daughter Delta’s third birthday on Instagram with a series of never-seen-before throwback images.
“Three years ago today. 47lbs heavier. Getting through painful contractions with back rubs and breathing,” began The Good Place actress in a Tuesday, December 19, post. “Occasionally swinging for the IV pole to try and feel sexy and open up my hips. After 36 hours of labor I met a girl i love more than all the molecules in all the world. Happy birthday, Delta. Love, mom. #meshpanties.”
The first picture features an about-to-pop Bell resting on a birthing ball, which can help ease back strain during pregnancy. In the next photo, Bell and husband Dax Shepard are in the delivery room and he is seen lovingly applying pressure to her lower back. The final flashback shows the now 37-year-old cradling her first born baby girl in her arms.
Bell, who is also mom of Lincoln, 4, once called giving birth “a wonderful experience” thanks to her epidural. “As someone who never experimented with drugs, I really enjoyed it,” she said during a 2015 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. “While they were doing it I thought: ‘What else could we get done down there? . . . Anything to keep the epidural flowing.”
Six hours later, when the pain medication left her system, the A Bad Moms Christmas star started scratching her face “like a meth addict” and found herself asking Shepard for a “re-up” of the epidural. Instead the nurse gave Bell Benadryl. “What a cocktail,” she joked. “I started telling all these stories and I was taking 30-second pauses between ‘and’ and ‘the.'”
Bell and Shepard, who have been married for four years, are committed to working on their relationship so they can be their best selves for their kids. “We don’t believe in The One. We don’t believe in the fairytale. We don’t believe that you can meet someone and you have a perfectly matching personalities,” the CHiPs actor, 42, told Us Weekly earlier this month. “We are opposites and it has taken a tremendous amount of work and therapy for us to coexist.”
