Ashley Tisdale has only just started feeling like "herself" again, almost two years after her daughter was born.
Ashley Tisdale gave birth to her first child in March 2021
The 'High School Musical' star admitted postpartum recovery has been a "long journey" and everything is "different" to how it was before she and husband Christopher French welcomed daughter Jupiter into the world in March 2021, but she is now more confident and accepting of herself.
Admitting she expected to feel more like her former self around the time Jupiter turned one, Ashley told E! News: "I didn't feel actually myself until recently, until the last couple of months. It's taken two years.
"I was suffering from really bad anxiety and I was like, 'What is going on?' And I just didn't feel great about my body. The last couple of months, I feel so great and I feel so much more accepting of my body.
"It's a long journey. Your relationship with yourself changes, your relationship with your partner changes, your relationship with friends change. Even friends that don't have kids, it's just different now because they're not going through the same stuff."
Ashley recently took part in the Phones Down for 5 challenge ahead of the National Day of Unplugging and she admitted she felt relieved to be parted from her iPhone because apps such as TikTok only serve to make her more anxious.
She said: "Recently, TikTok has been one that flares my anxiety.
"There's such fun stuff that I love about TikTok, but then there's a lot of scary stuff and negative and toxic stuff. You just get drawn into it. And then you realise you're an hour into this TikTok situation and you're like, 'What am I doing?'
"It's nice to be free of that and to just be in the moment more because you really feel less pressure, you feel happier."
The 37-year-old actress is thankful she has a group of famous fellow moms, including Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff and Meghan Trainor, around her for support.
She said: "Anytime I'm anxious about something, one of them has either gone through it already or knows exactly what I'm going through.
"You honestly can't get through it without a group like that."
Tagged in Ashley Tisdale