Thomas Rhett and wife Lauren Akins opened up about her “scary” experience with postpartum depression after welcoming their fourth daughter, Lillie.
“After Lillie, I do remember it was scary for me and there’s not many people you can talk to about that because you don’t want it to sound like you’re gossiping behind your wife’s back,” the country singer, 33, said on a recent episode of his wife’s “Live in Love with Lauren Akins” podcast. “It’s not like you want to call a buddy and be like, ‘Hey, my wife is acting super strange.'”
Rhett — who tied the knot with Akins, 33, in October 2012 — revealed he started to notice that his wife wasn’t acting like herself after the pair welcomed their youngest daughter, Lillie, 19 months, in November 2021.
“Lifeless is not the right word, but along the lines of dull,” Rhett continued. “It felt like a hopeless place for me.”
Before welcoming Lillie, the couple adopted their first daughter Willa, 7, from Uganda in May 2017. During the adoption process, Akins and Rhett hit a rough patch in their romance as the musician was on tour while his wife was pregnant with their daughter Ada, now 5. After working through their issues in couples therapy, the pair expanded their family in 2020 with daughter Lennon, 3.
In her past experiences, the Live in Love: Growing Together Through Life’s Changes author didn’t experience anything close to postpartum depression until she had Lillie.
“After Ada James, our marriage had a falling apart. After Lennon, the world had a falling apart,” Akins remarked on the June episode, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic. “After Lillie, I had a falling apart.”
Akins went on to explain after giving birth to Lillie something was “not normal” compared to birthing her other daughters. After talking to her friends about her feelings, Akins shared that her friends also thought she was “depressed” at the time. Rhett noted he never thought Akins would experience postpartum depression for the first time “nine years into marriage” especially after having four kids previously.
The Grammy nominee, who was unsure of what his wife was going through at the time, revealed he encouraged his wife to go to the doctor several times to get checked out. The twosome did joint counseling to work through it.
“It was amazing when she came out of it. The different human being that she was,” he explained. “There was just this loneliness about her and she’s not lonely. There was this un peace about her, and she’s a peaceful person. Every attribute about her was the complete 180 of herself and I had never experienced that before.”
