Kristen Doute on the Postpartum Darkness She Never Saw Coming and Finding Her Light Again

Kaia doesn’t know what her mother does for a living. She has no idea what people think of Kristen Doute, and she couldn’t care less what kind of day her mother had on set. At sixteen months old, she knows one thing for certain. “She just knows I’m her mama,” Kristen says.

Kristen has worked in front of cameras for most of her adult life, in a genre that runs on conflict and big feelings. Then she goes home. “I’ve spent so much of my adult life being watched, judged, and having people form opinions about who I am,” she says. “But to Kaia, I’m her safe place. I’m the person she wants to snuggle with, be silly with, and run to.”

Kaia reaches for her when she’s tired, when she’s upset, when she wants to be held, “or sometimes just because she wants me.” Kristen calls that the most grounding thing in her life right now, and the version of herself that answers it is her favorite one. “I don’t have to be entertaining or funny or have the right thing to say. I can just be me.”

“For the first time in my life, I don’t feel like I have anything to prove when I walk through my front door. I just get to be her mom. And that’s everything.”

It took a hard year to get to that door.

“I don’t feel like I have anything to prove when I walk through my front door.”

The Blur

On camera at our photo and video shoot, Kristen said she’s “out of her PPD moment” now and feeling lighter. The stretch before that is harder to talk about, and she talks about it anyway, for the mother who is still in it.

“Those first few months were such a blur. I was so incredibly happy to finally have Kaia in my arms, but at the same time, I was struggling in ways I hadn’t expected. That’s what made it so confusing. How could I be so in love with my daughter and still feel so sad, anxious, overwhelmed, and feel nothing like myself?”

She felt she was supposed to be enjoying every second, because this was everything she had ever wanted. And she did enjoy so much of it. “But when I wasn’t taking care of her, I felt completely lost. I didn’t always recognize myself. My emotions were all over the place, and sometimes I couldn’t even explain why I was crying.”

Then came the guilt, which stacked on itself. “You feel guilty for struggling, guilty for not feeling like yourself, and then guilty for feeling guilty. It’s exhausting.”

She didn’t have a name for it at first. “I didn’t even recognize it in myself at first because I thought it had to be something much more extreme,” she says. “I wish I’d understood that struggling with my everyday life, losing my sense of self, or feeling completely overwhelmed are all things worth talking to someone about.”

She was also back at work. Kaia was a newborn while Kristen was filming The Valley, which meant learning to be a mother on a set where her job was to “show up, be vulnerable, have difficult conversations, and basically have my life under a microscope.” She couldn’t be fully in either place. At work, she was thinking about Kaia. At home, she was still turning over whatever had happened while filming. “It’s really hard to turn that switch off. It even angered me that I chose to do my job when I had a newborn. That’s where the guilt kept coming through.”

Something had to give, and what gave was the bar she set for herself. “I’ve always been someone who wants to do everything all at once, but becoming a mom taught me that I can’t be everything to everyone all the time,” she says. “I still love my career, I still love what I do, but Kaia comes first. Period.” After a crazy day of filming, coming home to her daughter puts it in perspective. “Whatever drama felt so important a few hours earlier really isn’t important at all.”

She knows now what she would say to the woman she was in those months. “I wish I could tell that version of myself that she’s going to be okay, that she doesn’t have to have everything figured out, and that being a good mom doesn’t mean being happy every second of the day.”

“I’m finally starting to feel lighter, and more like myself again. But I also know and remember very clearly how lonely those darker moments can feel when you’re living in them.”

Me Too

She hasn’t forgotten that loneliness, and now she puts it to work. She is a NAMI ambassador for maternal mental health, a role she says means the world to her. Mental health is “something I’ve struggled with and been passionate about for most of my life,” she says. “But becoming a mom gave it a whole new meaning.”

Most of the work is conversation: on television, on podcasts and on social media, where women reach out to her about their own postpartum struggles. “Sometimes just hearing someone say, ‘Me too,’ can make you feel less alone.”

What she wants them to hear is plain. “You don’t have to wait until you’re at your breaking point to ask for help. You don’t have to minimize what you’re feeling just because you have a beautiful, healthy baby.” Motherhood is beautiful, she says, and it is also “really, really hard sometimes.” What she wants to take out of it is the shame.

For the mother reading this from the middle of it, she has one more thing to say.

“You can love your baby more than anything in the world and still be struggling. Both things can be true. And you deserve just as much love, patience, and care as the little person you’re giving everything to.”

“You can love your baby more than anything in the world and still be struggling. Both things can be true.”

Both Things Can Be True

Kristen comes back to that line more than once, and it fits a lot more of her than her postpartum year.

“I think I’m the most laid-back, high-strung person you’ll ever meet,” she says. Hand her an oversized T-shirt, leggings and a good show, and she’s happy. She doesn’t need a packed calendar. “But my brain? My brain has about 62 tabs open at all times.” She’s easygoing about dinner plans and what she’s wearing. With Kaia, she researches everything, asks a million questions and worries about things that haven’t happened. “I’m a free spirit who also likes to be in control. I’m easy going until I’m not.”

Motherhood turned the volume up on both sides, and it is also teaching her to loosen her grip. She wants a daughter who is adventurous, curious and fearless, “even if I’m quietly having a tiny panic attack watching her climb something.”

It has also changed how she sees her own mother. Growing up, Kristen rolled her eyes at the check-ins, the questions and the constant reminders to be careful. She thought her mom was being dramatic.

“Now I have Kaia, and I’m like, OH. I GET IT.”

The worry comes along with the love, and she couldn’t have understood it before she had a child of her own. What she has for her mom now is “mostly compassion,” she says, “not just as my mom, but as a woman who was doing her best to raise her kids.” They are closer than they have ever been.

“Now I have Kaia, and I’m like, OH. I GET IT.”

A Rock, a Stick, and Some Grass

The little girl at the center of all that worry has simpler concerns. Kristen has called Kaia “a root chakra girl,” and the description fits. “She doesn’t need some elaborate activity or crazy toy. Give that girl a rock, a stick, and some grass, and she’s living her best life!” Things Kristen has walked past a million times are suddenly fascinating, because she’s seeing them through Kaia’s eyes. “She really brings me back down to earth.”

Ask her what she’ll miss when this stage is over, and she names the ordinary parts. The way Kaia reaches for her hand. The way she wants her mother on the floor next to her while she plays. The cuddles, the silly noises, the bedtime routine. “I sort of hope we co-sleep forever,” she says. She jokes about knowing every Ms. Rachel song by heart, but she knows a day is coming when those songs stop playing in the house, “and that’s going to break my heart a little.”

“I think what I’ll miss most is just being her whole world for this little window of time,” she says. “I wish I could bottle up a thousand of these completely ordinary days and keep them forever.”

Just Kristen

Kristen’s own taste runs just as simple. Underneath the glam, she has always been a jeans and T-shirt girl. She started James Mae in 2018, before a lot of what people know her for now, and the brand is built on her love of vintage rock and roll and the broken-in style she has always gravitated toward.

“When I’m in an old band tee, my hair’s a mess, and I have zero makeup on, I feel the most like myself,” she says. “I’m not thinking about cameras, what I look like, or what anyone expects from me. I’m just Kristen.”

The brand carries her causes too, and she picks them the same way she picks her clothes, by what feels true to her. She won’t put James Mae’s name on something “because it looks good or sounds good.” The causes she backs such as mental health awareness, animal rescue, support for women and families, are ones she has a personal connection to. “At the end of the day, a T-shirt is a T-shirt,” she says. “But if that James Mae T-shirt can start a conversation, raise awareness, or give back to a cause that needs support, then it becomes something so much bigger. And honestly, that’s the part I’m most proud of.”

Inside Out

Being that comfortable in her own skin didn’t come easily. Kristen wants Kaia to know she’s beautiful from the inside out, and she’s honest that she’s still learning it herself.

“Oh, I definitely had to grow into it. And honestly, I think I’m still growing into it,” she says. When strangers have opinions about everything from your appearance to your personality, “it’s really easy to let those outside voices affect how you see yourself.”

So she watches how she talks about herself now. “I never want her to hear me picking apart my appearance or criticizing my body. I want her to grow up knowing that her worth has absolutely nothing to do with a number on a scale or whether someone else thinks she’s beautiful.” She will tell Kaia she’s beautiful every day, because she is. She’ll also tell her she’s smart, brave, funny, strong and kind.

“I want her to have the confidence to take up space, use her voice, make mistakes, and never feel like she has to shrink herself to make someone else comfortable,” she says. “And maybe the most beautiful part of raising a daughter is that I’m learning to give myself that same grace along the way.”

“I’m learning to give myself that same grace along the way.”

Protecting Her Peace

That grace is harder to come by in her line of work. Reality television rewards the big reaction, the emotional outbursts, the gossip and drama. Kristen is the first to say she hasn’t stopped having them. “Listen, I’m still Kristen. I’m still emotional, I still have big feelings, and I definitely haven’t mastered the art of letting everything roll off my back.”

What has changed is what she carries home. For years, every disagreement and every emotion came through the door with her. Now there’s a little girl on the other side of it who “just wants her mommy to be present, to play with her, to make her laugh, and to love her.” Kristen is learning that not everything deserves a reaction, and not everyone needs to understand her side of the story. Some days she’s better at it than others. She wants Kaia to grow up feeling loved, safe and secure, and she knows that starts with her own mental health and “being mindful of the energy I bring home.”

“I used to feel like I had to fight to be heard. Now I’m learning that sometimes protecting my peace is more important than proving my point,” she says. “And that’s a pretty big shift for me.”

Rest is still a work in progress. Even with a free hour, her brain runs through Kaia’s schedule. When she does take the time, she keeps it simple: a massage, her girlfriends, her own shows, or lying in bed watching something that isn’t Ms. Rachel. Sometimes it’s nothing at all. “No plans, no makeup, no one needing anything from me for an hour. Heaven!” The mom guilt still shows up, even when she knows Kaia is happy and cared for. “I’m learning that taking care of myself isn’t taking anything away from my daughter. If anything, it makes me a better, more present mom,” she says. “Ask me again in a year, and hopefully I’ll have figured out how to take a nap without feeling guilty about it.”

Every day needs to feel like home

The life she wants to come home to is a simple one. Her fiancé, Luke, and Kaia came to the shoot for family photos. Ask Kristen to picture the three of them a few years from now, on a random Monday morning, and the picture is small on purpose.

“I picture Kaia running around the backyard, barefoot and covered in dirt, while Luke is outside working on some project and I’m figuring out what we’re having for dinner (from our garden). We have a house full of dogs running around, music playing, and all of us just doing our thing… but together.”

She has spent much of her life chasing the next big thing, in her career and out of it. She still has goals, and she still loves to work and make things. “But the big dream is so much simpler,” she says. “It’s watching Kaia grow up happy and healthy, building a home filled with love, and finding joy in the little things.”

“I don’t need every day to be exciting. I just want it to feel like home.”

Enough

Home is also where she gets to be the version of herself the cameras rarely catch. So who is Kristen when no one is filming and the glam comes off?

“I think I’m still the same Kristen I’ve always been, just a little softer, a little wiser, more patient, and definitely a lot more tired!”

She still feels everything. She loves hard, overthinks, and has never been good at hiding her emotions. The difference is in what she does with it. For most of her life she felt she had to explain herself, defend herself, or prove something, in relationships, in friendships and to a public that had already made up its mind. That need has started to go quiet. She can be a great mom and still have hard days, she says. She can love her life and still struggle. She can be proud of how far she’s come and still have a lot of growing to do.

“When the cameras are off and the glam comes off, I’m just a mom who loves her daughter more than anything, who wants a happy home, who still laughs at inappropriate jokes, thrives on sarcasm and banter, wears the same oversized T-shirts, and is figuring life out one day at a time.”

“I think the biggest difference between who I am now and who I was a few years ago is that I’m not chasing some idea of who I’m supposed to be anymore. I’m learning to be happy with who I actually am. And for the first time, because of Kaia, that feels like enough.”

Get to Know Kristen – Rapid Fire Q&A

The Ms. Rachel song she sings in her sleep: “‘I’m So Happy!’ for Kaia and ‘Big Feelings’ for me! These are permanently downloaded into my brain.”

The place in her house that’s always a disaster: “My bedroom. Kaia’s stuff has taken over every square inch of our house.”

The one glam step she does even on no-makeup days: “Aquaphor. Even if I’m wearing sweats and haven’t brushed my hair, I need my lips hydrated.”

The last thing that made her belly-laugh: “Kaia! She’s such a little comedian without even trying. Her facial expressions and the random things she says and does absolutely send me.”

Connect with Kristen on Instagram and check out her brand James Mae for some fun, comfy, chic and fashionable tees.

Watch the full 5-minute exclusive with Kristen Doute. Watch now →

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