Katherine Heigl Gets Real About Feeling "Scared" Before Having Her C-Section

Pregnancy is all about uncertainty since you never know what's going to happen. Even when things are scheduled and happening as they should be. And in a recent Instagram post, Katherine Heigl opened up about feeling "scared" before her C-section and it's totally relatable. Just because you're going under for scheduled surgery doesn't mean that a thousand scary thoughts don't cross your mind. Even for someone who used to play a surgeon on TV.

Heigl posted a topless photo of her bump that her husband, Josh Kelley, took just before they went to the hospital so that she "could remember how incredibly pregnant" she was before the scheduled surgery. Although she's glowing in the series of photos she posted to commemorate baby Josh Jr.'s first birthday, she admits that she was freaking out. She explained:

Joshua Jr had been in the breech position for over a month and had still not moved an inch a week before his due date so I made the decision to have a cesarean and was incredibly nervous and a little scared this time last year.

It didn't help that she had never had surgery or been put under before and was trying to look "cool, calm and collected" for the camera.

Baby Josh is Heigl's third child. She has two daughters, Naleigh, 8 years old, and Adalaide, 4 years old, both of whom are adopted. So actually being pregnant was quite the experience this time around. She told Us Weekly that there were a lot more "ups and downs" this time around because of her postpartum hormones. She told People:

One minute you’re weirdly obsessed with this baby, like "Don’t take him out of my sight," and the next you’re kind of blue, you’re a little sad and a little freaked out. I actually prefer the adoption way because I wasn’t subject to hormones.

Apart from that, Heigl said that she enjoyed being pregnant, much to her surprise. The worst part, she added, was learning that Josh was breech and going in for surgery. And the gas. She added in the same interview:

The thing that really got me was the indigestion. You can ask my costars [on the set of Doubt], I never stopped burping. And I felt terrible about it, but there was just nothing I could do — I would be in the middle of saying something and I’d just start burping. It was awful. I felt like a frat boy.

Heigl is famously super open about her struggles as a mom, which is so refreshing in a an environment where it feels like everyone tries to make everything look *perfect* for social media. She told Us Weekly that being a working mom was pretty miserable at first, which is also a pretty brave thing to say outloud. The ever righteous mommy-shamers are always listening for someone to admit that being a mom isn't every woman's sole purpose in life.

In 2009, when she was still on Grey's Anatomy, things were rough for the young mom. "I would come home angry and frustrated that I'd missed everything with my kid that day. I didn't get to wake her up from her nap, or do bath time or bedtime. I'd have to sneak into her room and kiss her when she was sleeping, hoping not to wake her up," she told Good Housekeeping.

Heigl's priority is obviously family, as she told the magazine. But it's never pretty "If I spread myself too thin. I'm not a good actor, I'm not a good mother, and I'm just really high-strung — and everybody hates me," she said.

It looks like, as all new parents do, Heigl worked it out. And part of doing that is remembering that it's OK to be scared and frustrated. Who hasn't been there?

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