Mandy Moore has compared giving birth to taking acid.
Mandy Moore
The 'This Is Us' actress and her husband, Taylor Goldsmith, welcomed their son August into the world last month and the 36-year-old star explained her labour was an "insular experience" and she didn't really interact much with the people around her.
Speaking on the Informed Pregnancy Podcast, she said: "It's like you're on this trip. You're on this like acid trip or something. Like, I was in my own head, doing my own thing. I could hear people—I could hear suggestions and sometimes agree with them.
"Ultimately, it was such an insular experience, which sounds silly that I guess I didn't really imagine it. I felt like it was going to be somewhat more participatory with other people, that I would see their faces and be awake and alert and like, listen to their suggestions."
Mandy recalled how she had her eyes closed during the process and added: "I was on my own. It was my own narrative, my own story."
The 'Candy' singer felt "super prepared" for labour because she'd taken classes on breathing techniques.
However, she admitted: "All of that just went out the window. For me, it was just all about instinct," the singer explained.
And when she held her son in her arms for the first time, Mandy had never "felt higher".
She said: "You are completely smothered in just that feeling of, I have never felt higher, I have never felt this kind of love. It was like the world stopped again and you're not aware of anything else going on.
"[August is] the greatest gift in the world."
Mandy had originally planned for an unmedicated home birth, but later changed to a hospital birth with a midwife present and on the way into the medical facility, she changed her mind about pain relief.
She recalled telling her spouse: "Taylor, I'm getting an epidural. I don't want you to be mad at me but that's what's happening when we get to the hospital."
However, her platelet levels ended up being too low to have the epidural.
She added: "Labour was intense, it was grueling, it was harrowing."
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