Hilaria Baldwin on being pregnant during the pandemic
Hilaria Baldwin has experienced her fair share of anxiety and stress during the coronavirus pandemic — she and husband Alec Baldwin have four children under the age of 6 and their fifth on the way after all — but also has found the extra time with her family to be special. “Normally we wouldn't be spending 24/7 together when the kids go to school and my husband and I will go to work and you get to go have dinner with friends, you know, all of the things that we do,” she says during Yahoo’s Reset Your Mindset event. “But we're not doing that. We're all together. So I'm trying to be extremely grateful for this time, especially, I'm holding out hope that this is not forever. I'm pretty sure it's not forever, but it might be for awhile. It is a time that we will never forget for the good parts and the bad parts, and just realize that this can be a really good bonding time.”
Video Transcript
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HILARIA BALDWIN: Hey, it's Hilaria Baldwin. I'm here quarantining with my family. I am currently pregnant. I'm about five months pregnant, and I have four children that are running every single direction-- in opposite directions all the time. They range between ages one and six. It is extremely hectic, but we are figuring it out.
So I'm trying to be grateful for this time because it is time that we will never forget for the good parts and the bad parts. Gratitude gets me through every single day, in perspective. Like, I'm like, you know what? We are so lucky. We're healthy.
That being said, it is extremely stressful. I have four kids, six and under, and I am over five months pregnant with number five.
I'm lucky in that I have been pregnant, like, a million times. I feel a lot for women who are having their first baby because I think that that must be really scary, not just being pregnant and giving birth but the after part. I mean, they tell you when you have a newborn, your job for the next month is don't let them get sick. And you're like, oh my god. I have to keep this thing that I made and was inside and now it's outside, and I'm so excited to meet you. But now I have to keep you well. And then to keep a child well in corona is extra scary.
Right now, it's been a big shift. You know, and Alec and I are people that we spend a ton of time together normally. So we are lucky that we already-- it wasn't like we had a very distanced relationship and then all of a sudden we're, like, together all the time, but it's a different kind of togetherness. It's a togetherness where we're dealing with, A, something that's extremely stressful. It's a big transition, and literally the whole world is affected by it.
So it's funny. When he gets down, I'm there to, like, pull him back up. And when I get down, he's there to pull me back up.
You know, have we had our moments? 100%. If you-- if there's a relationship that has, like, been completely seamless through this, I would like to know what exactly they're doing. But, you know, then, you know, the clock ticks on, and life goes on.
I have to say it's really hard. The homeschooling thing is really hard because a lot of people can remember, like, doing homework with your parents wasn't always a great experience because you just interact with your parents differently than you do with a teacher. A lot of it is figuring out what the teacher exactly wants us to do. And so they said, you know what? Even if he's not completing the whole piece of paper, just, like, have him, like, really get excited about one part. And if he feels, like, too much, then just, like, focus on the one part that he feels really excited about.
And I thought that was such a nice thing to hear because before I was like, oh my god. We have to complete all of this stuff every single day, and then the next day, same thing, whole new assignments.
So I really loved that advice. I think, you know, advice for people is that we're all doing this together. I think there was a fear-- that a lot of people expressed the fear that their kids are going to get behind. We're all in this together, so we're all going to be behind together.
I cried the other morning, and it was over, like, a bunch of really silly little things. And I don't typically do that, and my kids were all like-- and I wasn't freaking out on them. I just, like-- just had tears. There were just tears because I was so overwhelmed.
Some things that I'm practicing that are helping me stay positive are spending me time at night. I close myself off in my bathroom, and I love to exercise and do breath work. I take baths morning and night. That really, really helps me. And sometimes there's little people in the bathroom with me, which is fine, or inside the bath. But at least it's like the warm water on my skin.
Whenever I get down, I always think about how much worse it could be, and how much worse it could be all of a sudden makes my situation seem not as bad. And with that, it pulls me up a little bit and allows me to have a lightness and a strength to be able to attack my problem.
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