Welcome to Mothership: Parenting stories you actually want to read, whether you're thinking about or passing on kids, from egg-freezing to taking home baby and beyond. Because motherhood is a big if — not when — and it's time we talked about it that way.
After Kerry Washington gave birth to her second child, a boy named Caleb Kelechi, hitting the gym to sculpt her "post-baby body" was the last thing on her mind. The new mom was happy to take a break from working out after delivering her second child with husband Nnamdi Asomugha on October 5. "My doctor made me take my six weeks off, and I did," Washington, 40 told People this week. "It was really important to me to have that downtime and then start working out slowly, which I’m still doing, I am still slowly getting back into it."
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Even still, Washington was worried about contributing to the already-intense pressure news moms feel to lose weight quickly when she saw an incorrect report that she was exercising a week after giving birth. "It was rumored somewhere that I was working out a week or two after he was born and it really upset me, actually," said the Scandal star, who gave birth to daughter Isabelle Amarachi Asomugha, in 2014.
"I never talk about rumors in the media," she continued, "but I was really sad that somebody printed that because I felt like, 'Oh, that makes women feel like they have to start working out’ — like, ‘Oh celebrities work out right away.' And I was like, ‘No way!'"
We agree that this was one tabloid rumor worth clearing up. New moms are under enough stress as it is — you know, being tasked with raising an itty-bitty human and all — and being bombarded with unrealistic "post-baby body" expectations from Hollywood and the media doesn't serve anybody.