Shawn Johnson has opened up about experiencing postpartum depression and feeling “estranged” from her husband Andrew East after giving birth to her third child in 2023.
“Our third baby was the greatest blessing, he’s amazing, but he was completely different from the other two,” the Olympic gymnast said on an upcoming episode of the Mind If We Talk podcast, according to E! news.
Of her 2-year-old son, Barrett, she says: “He wasn’t eating, he wasn’t sleeping, he was a crying baby at night. It was a lot of things I had never dealt with before…I was losing control.”
Ms Johnson, 34, said she felt as if she was “drowning” and admitted: “I didn’t know how to help myself or ask for help because I knew it was my job to find a way to help the baby first.”
“By the time I was able to help my baby, I had lost control and didn’t even know how to get back to normal,” she added.
The athlete explained that his daily routine of getting out in the sun and watching funny movies didn’t fill him with the same joy, and he didn’t know how to ask East, 34, for help.
“It caused a lot of tension for us,” she says. “And I didn’t even know what the problem was.”
“We had reached a point where it wasn’t normal,” Johnson continues.
“I don’t want to say things got worse, but we lost touch, we got cold, we became distant. And I remember you sitting me down and saying, ‘I’m going to therapy.'”
The gold medalist recalled feeling exhausted as he did not have the energy to argue with East and ultimately agreed to East’s request.
Johnson believes that therapy was “the first thing that started healing[her]” and was the “greatest gift” from the East.
“I’ve never doubted us, and I’ve never doubted Andrew. But I’m a perfectionist and want to succeed, so I always doubt myself,” she says.
Johnson further elaborated, saying she wants to “be the best” at her job as a mother and wife.
In addition to Barrett, who married in 2016, the couple are also parents to 6-year-old daughter Drew Hazel and 4-year-old son Jett James.
Johnson has openly shared his family life through Instagram, revealing that he got five new tattoos in honor of East and their children in 2024.
