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- The actor recently realized her expectations for herself were not realistic.
- At five months postpartum, she's still not feeling like she did before pregnancy.
- She's trying to stay calm so that it rubs off on her son, August.
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In February, Mandy Moore and her husband, Taylor Goldsmith, welcomed their first child, August.
At first, Moore said she was pushing herself, and her body, to do too much too soon.
She recently left her 5-month-old for the first time for a 48-hour getaway with some mom friends. They went for a hike, something Moore loved to do before becoming a mom.
This time, though, it didn't go as planned.
"It was so much harder than I was expecting," said Moore, who'd been dreaming about this trip and getting back into the mountains during the pandemic and her pregnancy.
The revelation came during an Instagram Live with clinical psychologist and perinatal mental-health specialist Ashurina Ream, who invited Moore to share her experiences as a new mom.
"My knees hurt, my legs felt like Jell-O, my toes were crushing the front of my boots as I was going down. I just was caught in this wave of 'This is never-ending, we're not going to get back to the tents, I can't wait to take the shoes off," Moore said, adding that she really started to beat herself up for not being as up for the hike as she'd imagined.
"Why can't I just, like, suck it up and get through this challenging part of the walk?" she said in the chat with Ream. "Sometimes [I have] unrealistic expectations of what I should be able to do, and I'm trying not to carry that with me into motherhood."
As with so many mothers, Moore said she realized it isn't easy to maintain friendships while taking care of a baby around the clock.
That's why taking the space and time to connect with friends is so important, she said. So is allowing herself to make room for new connections with people in a similar season of life, and therefore at a similar level of hiking ability.
Moore said trying to find a community of new moms was "intimidating" because she considers herself shy, and kind of anxious right now, something many moms can relate to.
"I just didn't really recognize the worries, the fears, the sense of responsibility that is so ever present moving forward once you become a mom," Moore said.
For now, she's giving her body the time it needs to get back to the vigorous hikes. She's also giving her family permission to accept that everything is a phase and, eventually, that August will sleep through the night.
"I remember our postpartum doula always used to tell us that 'calm is contagious,'" she said on Instagram. "I loved that."