Britney Spears details her battle with postpartum depression after welcoming her two sons and says ‘there wasn’t the same conversation about mental health back then’

Britney Spears has detailed her battle with depression after the birth of her two sons in her new memoir, The Woman In Me.

The pop icon, 41, who shares Sean Preston, 18, and Jayden James, 17, with ex-husband Kevin Federline, has endured a public battle with her mental health over the years and wrote about how shortly before and after her career went into a spiral. mother.

She writes, “Unfortunately, there wasn’t the same conversation about mental health then as there is now

“I hope that new mothers reading this who are struggling will get help early.

‘Because I now know that I had almost all the symptoms of perinatal depression: sadness, anxiety, fatigue.’

The first signs of Spears’ declining mental health came in February 2006 when she was pictured driving with her then five-month-old son Sean Preston on her lap while holding the steering wheel with one hand.

Spears was followed by photographers as she stopped near her home in Malibu, California, and sent her nanny to a Starbucks for a drink.

Initially unrepentant, she said, “I had a horrific, terrifying encounter with the paparazzi while I was with my baby,” she said.

“I was terrified that they would endanger us. I instinctively took measures to keep my baby and me out of harm’s way.”

Her comments sparked widespread criticism.

She later took some of the responsibility, saying, “I made a mistake and so it is what it is, I guess.”

In May 2006, her parenthood was again called into question when she almost dropped her then eight-month-old son on his head.

The pop star – who was pregnant with her second son at the time – fell as she left the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in New York with Sean Preston in one arm and a drink in the other hand.

As she walked to her car, her pants appeared to get tangled in her open-toed shoes just as she tried to step around a pothole, witnesses said.

Britney was said to be distraught over the accident and burst into tears.

In 2007, the pop megastar had some of her most famous public meltdowns, including shaving her head and attacking a paparazzo’s car. In the memoir, she explained that she was “mad with grief” after the death of her aunt and a custody battle. about her sons with ex Federline.

She said: ‘Now that my head was shaved, everyone was afraid of me, even my mother.

‘I waved those weeks without my children and lost it again and again. I didn’t even know how to take care of myself.’

Britney gave an even more intimate look at her life at the time, continuing, “I’m willing to admit that I’ve been in the throes of severe postpartum depression, abandonment by my husband, the torture of being separated from my two babies, the death of my adored Aunt Sandra, and the constant drumbeat of the paparazzi, I began to think like a child in some ways.”

Spears’ mental health came under renewed scrutiny following a Gimme More performance at the MTV Video Music Awards in September 2007 – in which a disoriented Spears sloppily mimicked and appeared to forget dance moves.

After taking the stage in nothing more than her underwear and with extremely visible hair extensions from shaving her head months ago, the singer’s big comeback came to an abrupt halt.

The performance shocked fans and was universally panned by audiences and critics.

In January 2008, Spears was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center after police arrived at her home – after locking herself in a bathroom with her sons and refusing to hand them over to Federline – noticing that she appeared to be intoxicated to be.

Federline was given sole legal and physical custody and Spears was placed in a 5150 involuntary psychiatric hold and admitted to the psychiatric ward of the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

Spears would regain visitation rights for her sons in July 2008 and began returning to the spotlight with a documentary and TV appearances.

She occasionally shared snaps of her with the boys over the years — beaming at the camera at a baseball game, celebrating birthday dinners, splashing around in a pool — hinting at a tender bond forged between mother and sons.

But Federline reportedly received 70 percent custody in 2019.

Notably, Kevin now has full custody of their two boys and recently made the decision to move the family from Los Angeles to Hawaii.

In February 2008, Britney was placed into a conservatorship overseen by her father Jamie Spears and attorney Andrew Wallet, giving them full control over her assets and value that would last thirteen years.

An insider previously claimed against the New Yorker that Spears previously had a multi-million dollar fortune in the early 2000s, but that this had been reduced to just “a few million dollars” when her conservatorship was established in 2008.

The arrangement provided a $2,000 per week stipend for the singer, but her father paid himself about $16,000 per month to run the conservatory, and her former court-appointed attorney Samuel Ingham III was paid an annual salary of $520,000, according to the agreement. New Yorker.

Britney shocked her fans when she testified in June 2021 that her conservatorship, which was introduced in 2008, was keeping her from getting married or even having another child.

“I want to be able to get married and have a child,” she said during a 2021 conservatorship hearing.

‘At the conservatory I was told that I cannot get married or have a child. I currently have an IUD inside me, so I won’t get pregnant.’

Her wish was granted six months later, in November 2021, when a judge officially ended the conservatorship.