Amanda Seyfried, Khloe Kardashian and More Celeb Moms Share Breast-Feeding Struggles: It’s ‘Incredibly Hard’

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Amanda Seyfried, Khloe Kardashian and More Celeb Moms Share Breast-Feeding Struggles: It's 'Incredibly Hard'

Sharing their struggles. Amanda Seyfried, Khloé Kardashian and more celebrity moms have been vocal about their challenges with breast-feeding.

“You become very desperate,” the Mamma Mia! actress — who shares two children with husband Thomas Sadoski — exclusively told Us Weekly in April 2019 of her first experience trying to breast-feed. “Because up until recently, it’s like a hidden, closeted thing. Breast-feeding is incredibly hard. If you don’t find it hard, you are rare. A rare, lucky person.”

Seyfried continued: “I feel like we’re all talking about it, but not enough still. Because I remember when I was having trouble, I mean, I was reaching out to [friends] saying, ‘I haven’t spoken to you in, like, a year, but how do you…?’”

The Mean Girls star — who wed the Life in Pieces alum in March 2017 — gave birth to daughter Nina and a son in 2017 and 2020, respectively. After dealing with her struggles independently, Seyfried has found a newfound “love” of passing on her words of wisdom to other moms in similar situations.

“I have, like, a very, very, very perfect group of women in my life, and if I need to lean, I’m just, like, falling onto these people,” the Veronica Mars alum told Us in 2019. “We’re all each other’s rocks. And it’s funny because when one of your girlfriends is struggling, you end up taking the role of the rock and then when you’re struggling, they do. … It’s a give and take, and that’s the best kind of friendship.”

Kardashian, for her part, struggled to breast-feed daughter True — whom she coparents with ex-boyfriend Tristan Thompson — for “weeks and “weeks” after her April 2018 birth.

“For me, it was so painful but I also was not producing a lot of milk. So I had to pump every time she was napping,” the Kardashians star wrote via Twitter the following November. “I guess due to stress my milk was not coming in. I tried and I just couldn’t give her enough. So I had to go to formula.”

Kardashian continued at the time: “I tried literally EVERYTHING!! Doctors came to check, I met with the lactation specialist, I did power pumping, I drink the tea, ate the cookies, did special massages etc. it just wasn’t working for me. Once True started loosing [sic] weight bc of it, I had to give her formula.”

The Good American designer and Thompson — who ultimately called it quits for good in late 2021 — welcomed a baby boy via surrogate in July 2022, the basketball star’s fourth child. (Thompson also shares son Prince with Jordan Craig and son Theo with Maralee Nichols.)

Scroll below to read more celebrity moms’ candid thoughts about breast-feeding:

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Amanda Seyfried, Khloe Kardashian and More Celeb Moms Share Breast-Feeding Struggles: It's 'Incredibly Hard'

Sharing their struggles. Amanda Seyfried, Khloé Kardashian and more celebrity moms have been vocal about their challenges with breast-feeding.

“You become very desperate,” the Mamma Mia! actress — who shares two children with husband Thomas Sadoski — exclusively told Us Weekly in April 2019 of her first experience trying to breast-feed. “Because up until recently, it’s like a hidden, closeted thing. Breast-feeding is incredibly hard. If you don’t find it hard, you are rare. A rare, lucky person.”

Seyfried continued: “I feel like we’re all talking about it, but not enough still. Because I remember when I was having trouble, I mean, I was reaching out to [friends] saying, ‘I haven’t spoken to you in, like, a year, but how do you…?’”

The Mean Girls star — who wed the Life in Pieces alum in March 2017 — gave birth to daughter Nina and a son in 2017 and 2020, respectively. After dealing with her struggles independently, Seyfried has found a newfound “love” of passing on her words of wisdom to other moms in similar situations.

“I have, like, a very, very, very perfect group of women in my life, and if I need to lean, I’m just, like, falling onto these people,” the Veronica Mars alum told Us in 2019. “We’re all each other’s rocks. And it’s funny because when one of your girlfriends is struggling, you end up taking the role of the rock and then when you’re struggling, they do. … It’s a give and take, and that’s the best kind of friendship.”

Kardashian, for her part, struggled to breast-feed daughter True — whom she coparents with ex-boyfriend Tristan Thompson — for “weeks and “weeks” after her April 2018 birth.

“For me, it was so painful but I also was not producing a lot of milk. So I had to pump every time she was napping,” the Kardashians star wrote via Twitter the following November. “I guess due to stress my milk was not coming in. I tried and I just couldn’t give her enough. So I had to go to formula.”

Kardashian continued at the time: “I tried literally EVERYTHING!! Doctors came to check, I met with the lactation specialist, I did power pumping, I drink the tea, ate the cookies, did special massages etc. it just wasn’t working for me. Once True started loosing [sic] weight bc of it, I had to give her formula.”

The Good American designer and Thompson — who ultimately called it quits for good in late 2021 — welcomed a baby boy via surrogate in July 2022, the basketball star’s fourth child. (Thompson also shares son Prince with Jordan Craig and son Theo with Maralee Nichols.)

Scroll below to read more celebrity moms’ candid thoughts about breast-feeding:

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Laura Benanti

“We’re made to feel like breast-feeding is the most natural thing in the world and ‘breast is best’ and all the things. And then all of a sudden, you’re like, I can’t feed my baby,” the Younger alum exclusively told Us in June 2023, noting that her daughter Ella was allergic to the proteins found in her milk. “Am I giving them poison? You’re telling me I’m giving them poison if I feed them like that is best.”

Benanti shares Ella and Louisa with her husband, Patrick Brown. (Louisa arrived in 2021 via surrogate.)

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Amanda Seyfried

The Big Love alum recalled to Us in 2019 that she reached out to multiple friends, despite years of silence, for advice on breast-feeding Nina. Now, she doles out advice to new moms in similar positions.

“I gave myself two days off in the first week so I wouldn’t be scared and sad every time she woke up to feed,” Seyfried wrote via Instagram comment that April after actress Claire Holt expressed “self-doubt” over feeding her first child. “And it helped so much. No guilt. Just pump and bottle. And then did both throughout. Less pressure. You’re not alone.”

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Khloe Kardashian

The Revenge Body alum, who was initially wary about breast-feeding amid her pregnancy with True, ultimately had to switch over to formula.

“I had to stop breast-feeding,” Kardashian tweeted in July 2018. “It was really hard for me to stop (emotionally) but it wasn’t working for my body. Sadly. … I fought and fought to try and continue but then when I actually stopped, I didn’t realize what a relief it was for me not to stress and worry anymore. Any sec I had of downtime I was stressing to produce more for the next feeding.”

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Olivia Munn

After the Newsroom alum and boyfriend John Mulaney welcomed their first child, son Malcolm, in November 2021, she admittedly struggled with feeding the newborn.

“Breast-feeding is soooo hard, especially if you have low supply,” Munn wrote via Instagram Story in January 2022, noting she’s tried “countless” vitamins, teas and lozenges, as well as even worked with multiple lactation consultants to no avail.

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Heather Rae El Moussa

“It’s definitely been a journey !! I thought…. I’ll just pop him on my boob and feed him anytime. Ya no!!!” the Selling Sunset star wrote via Instagram in February 2023 about her first child, whom she welcomed with husband Tarek El Moussa one month earlier. “Tristan had tongue tie, cheek tie, lip tie and jaundice which were all caught very early on thanks to my incredible lactation specialist and @tonguetietribe, they’re literally baby fairies 🧚‍♀️.” 

Heather continued: “I’m so lucky to have found them for the knowledge & support🙏🏻 but it made it very hard for him to latch & suck and it made it so that he was burning a lot of calories because it was so hard for him to eat so his weight was dropping.”

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Lauren Conrad

While the Hills alum — who shares two sons with husband William Tell — thought breast-feeding would be “natural” and beautiful,” it turned out to be anything but simple.

“I felt like I was failing at something that should come really naturally, and it was really difficult for me,” Conrad said during a May 2019 episode of her “Asking for a Friend” podcast, revealing she felt “like a bad mom” for failing to properly breast-feed eldest son Liam.

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Jeannie Mai

“[Nursing has] been the most difficult part of this entire mom journey,” the former Real cohost wrote via Instagram in March 2022. “I already HEARD it was gonna be, but I never imagined this. For me, it was even more difficult than giving birth.”

Mai, who welcomed daughter Monaco in the previous January with husband Jeezy, further explained that her milk supply was very low. She added: “Every three hours [has] looked like this: Latch, supplement with formula since I could only give her an ounce, (IF that), go and pump to signal to body to make more milk, set alarm to take milk thistle pills, sunflower Lecithin pills, drink fenugreek tea, massage boobs, in one hour prepare boobs with a hot compress or towel, wake the baby up, repeat. I had to catch myself because it actually got to my mental [health], and things started to feel dark.”

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Hilary Duff

After the Younger alum welcomed baby No. 3, daughter Mae, she was nervous about nursing after she struggled to produce enough milk after son Luca and daughter Banks were born. (Duff shares Luca with ex-husband Mike Comrie and her two daughters with spouse Matthew Koma.)

“I’m just not a huge milk producer, so it’s emotional for me,” she recalled on an episode of Dr. Berlin’s “Informed Pregnancy Podcast” in April 2021. “This is the first baby that I haven’t supplemented with yet, so I’ve just exclusively been breast-feeding her. I’m going to keep trying that for a couple of weeks.”

She added: “Since I haven’t in the past, I have tons of anxiety that I’m not, and that she’s not getting enough, and then I’m in my head, and then I don’t feel like enough, and then the spiral continues from there, I’m not even at week three yet, so I need to just sit back and chill and trust that my body is doing the right thing. And she’s gaining weight.”

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Ashley Graham

The supermodel found it “really difficult” to nurse her oldest son, Isaac, after his January 2020 birth.

“I had a lactation expert come over and help me because the first couple of days, my nipples were super bloody and it hurt,” Graham, who shares Isaac and twins Malachi and Roman with husband Justin Ervin, wrote via Instagram two months later. “Part of the reason was because I was just jamming my boob into Isaac’s mouth and apparently there’s a technique that my lactation nurse taught me. The nipple goes at the nose and then you have to flip it all the way into the mouth and the whole areola goes into the mouth. Good luck.”

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Morgan Stewart

“I obviously had no idea what I was doing,” Stewart wrote via Instagram Story in March 2021 of the first time she breast-fed daughter Row Renggli, whom she shares with husband Jordan McGraw. “Full on bloody and cut nips … that eventually healed (THANK GOD.) If things didn’t take a turn for the better, I would have totally just done formula! However you choose to feed your baby IS ALL GOOD.”

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Jade Roper

The Bachelor in Paradise alum, who shares three kids with husband Tanner Tolbert, opened up about her breast-feeding struggles in February 2021. 

“11 weeks of no sleep and to be honest, I don’t want to mom today,” Roper wrote via Instagram at the time, three months after giving birth to youngest son Reed. “Yet, here I am right now typing this and having a kid’s electric toothbrush thrown in my face (literally), turning it on and off for the 1,000,000th time because it makes [my son] Brooks happy — and only ‘Mama’ can turn it on and off. I’ve become more resilient this time around to letting the little expectations go, but the sleep deprivation during the newborn stage is brutal and I’ve hit my wall.”

She continued: “[They’re] wearing me down this week. I’m exhausted from trying all avenues to figure out breast-feeding issues. And I’ve been experiencing vertigo to where I feel I can’t function enough to be a good mom. I know I will survive this as I have before, but I feel so far down the rabbit hole today.”