Celebrity Moms Who Have Shared Their C-Section Stories: Sharna Burgess, Serena Williams, Amy Schumer and More

Credit: AFF-USA/Shutterstock

Celebrity Moms Who Have Shared Their C-Section Stories: Sharna Burgess, Serena Williams, Amy Schumer and More

Sharing their stories. There is no shortage of celebrity moms who have opened up about their experiences with Cesarean births. “I didn’t expect a C-section,” Sharna Burgess wrote via Instagram in July 2022 alongside a photo that showed her scar. “I didn’t necessarily have a birth plan but even my relaxed go with the flow approach got tested when we were told this was the safest option. Our little Zane was trying so hard to get out but after 30+ hrs of labor and my water breaking TWICE, I just wasn’t dilating enough.” The Dancing With the Stars pro welcomed son Zane with husband Brian Austin Green in June 2022. “In the moment it was scary, s–t even on the table it was scary,” she said of her birthing experience. “But Zane arrived healthy and happy and that was always the priority.” Amy Schumer has also been candid about the terror she experienced welcoming her son Gene into the world in May 2019 with husband Chris Fischer. [jwplayer Xd0rIgzk-zhNYySv2] “I was throwing up through the first hour of my C-section. It’s supposed to take about an hour and a half — mine took over three hours because of my endometriosis and that was really scary,” the comedian revealed during a December 2019 appearance on the “Informed Pregnancy and Parenting Podcast.” Schumer compared her birthing process to “torture” but said her husband helped her through it. “Chris was so great. We just stared in each other’s eyes and he just held me there. Then they let me hold Gene for a good amount of time. I got to see him and hold him,” the Trainwreck actress shared. Oscar-winner Kate Winslet initially obscured that she welcomed her eldest child, daughter Mia, via Cesarean delivery. “I’ve never talked about this. I’ve gone to great pains to cover it up, but Mia was an emergency C-section,” she told Gotham magazine in March 2004. “I just said I had a natural birth because I was so completely traumatized by the fact that I hadn't given birth. I felt like a complete failure." More stars have begun renouncing the narrative of “failure” and sharing their childbirth scars, like Burgess did. Schumer also posted a snapshot of her post-procedure bod via Instagram. “Feeling like my C-section looks cute today! #hotgirlwinter #csection,” she captioned the NSFW pic in January 2021. Scroll through to see the celebrity moms who have been open about their C-sections: [podcast_block]

Credit: AFF-USA/Shutterstock

Lauren Bushnell

The Bachelor alum opened up about the intense procedure after she and husband Chris Lane welcomed their second child together, son Baker Weston Lane. 

“Hi hi! Thank you for all the love and prayers,” Bushnell wrote via her Instagram Story in October 2022. “We are home and healing. C sections are no joke — wow. Baby is healthy. I’m already night sweating. Life is good with two. Love you all so much.”

Credit: Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Vanessa Morgan

Nearly two years after her son's birth, the Riverdale star reflected on the scary delivery.

"I was thrown a curveball and River's heart rate was racing, and I had to get an emergency C-section," Morgan told Kindred By Parents in August 2022. "But I remember being a little bit ashamed that my body let me down, and I kind of had to release that for me and be like, 'No, I'm proud of my body.'"

The actress decided to get a tattoo to celebrate her scar from the experience, adding, "I got the word kintsugi, which is Japanese pottery that is believed to be more beautiful for having been broken."

Credit: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Beyonce

Queen B herself struggled with a difficult pregnancy before welcoming twins Rumi and Sur with Jay-Z in June 2017.

“My body went through more than I knew it could,” she explained in her Netflix special Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé. "I had high blood pressure. I developed toxemia, preeclampsia. And in the womb, one of my babies’ heartbeat paused a few times, so I had to get an emergency C-section.”

The “Crazy in Love” singer and her rapper husband also share daughter Blue Ivy, who they welcomed in January 2012.

Credit: Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Angelina Jolie

The Girl, Interrupted actress wasn’t perturbed by giving birth to daughter Shiloh Jolie-Pitt via surgical procedure in May 2006.

“I had a C-section and I found it fascinating," she told Vanity Fair in May 2008. "I didn't find it a sacrifice and I didn't find it a painful experience. I found it a fascinating miracle of what a body can do.”

Jolie shares two other biological children — twins Vivienne and Knox — and three adopted children — Maddox, Sahara and Pax — with her ex-husband, Brad Pitt. The Maleficent star filed for divorce in September 2016. A judge declared her legally single in April 2019.

Credit: Simone Comi/ipa-agency.net/Shutterstock

Kate Winslet

The Titanic actress had her first child, daughter Mia, via Cesarean in October 2000. She didn’t admit to it until four years later, when she told Gotham magazine she’d been “traumatized” by not giving birth naturally.

“My whole life, I'd been told I had great child-bearing hips. There's this thing amongst women that if you can handle childbirth, you can handle anything. I had never handled childbirth and I felt like in some way I couldn't enter the 'powerful women's club,’” she told the outlet in March 2004.

In December 2003, Winslet had her son Joe naturally. She shares Joe and another son, Bear, with her ex-husband Sam Mendes. She welcomed Mia with her first husband, Jim Threapleton.

Credit: MediaPunch/Shutterstock

Amy Schumer

Although the Life With Beth actress compared her childbirth experience to “torture,” she immediately felt relief from her hyperemesis gravidarum-related nausea once the procedure was over.

“I had a fresh C-section which had complications [but] I was just so happy,” she explained during a December 2019 appearance on the “Informed Pregnancy and Parenting” podcast.

Credit: Sara Jaye Weiss/Shutterstock

Sharna Burgess

After Cesarean delivery, the ballroom dancer described postpartum recovery as “unlike anything else.”

Burgess wrote via Instagram in July 2022 that she was initially “afraid” to examine her incision after welcoming her first child the previous month. “I looked and thought, ‘Wow, I am utterly unrecognizable and my body has been through some serious s--t.’ But of course it had … I grew a life inside me. That miracle makes it all worth it,” she said.

Credit: Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Beverley Mitchell

The 7th Heaven alum opened up to Us Weekly after the July 2020 birth of her daughter Mayzel.

“It’s been a bit of a difficult recovery. We had complications in surgery. It’s just been slow and steady,” she said at the time. “I lost a lot of blood, but I had amazing doctors. I was at a great hospital, and they took great care of me. It’s a slow and steady process to recover.”

One month prior, Mitchell told Us that her doctors had instructed her to schedule a C-section because of her “thin uterine wall.” She shares Mayzel, Hutton and Kenzie with her husband, Michael Cameron.

Credit: Anthony Harvey/Shutterstock

Serena Williams

After having an emergency C-section in September 2017, the tennis pro experienced “excruciating pain” and had a cough so severe her stitches burst.

“I was coughing because I had an embolism, a clot in one of my arteries,” she wrote in an April 2022 personal essay for Elle magazine. “The doctors would also discover a hematoma, a collection of blood outside the blood vessels, in my abdomen, then even more clots that had to be kept from traveling to my lungs.”

Williams had surgery to get restitched, “the first of many surgeries” she underwent during recovery. The Olympian shares her daughter Olympia with her husband, Alexis Ohanian.