Hayden Panettiere Felt Like Her ‘Soul Was Dead’ After Giving Birth

Hayden Panettiere had one daughter. The actor was candid about her experience with postpartum depression. She said that immediately after giving birth, she experienced an utter void of emotions. It made her feel empty, which this led to significant struggles in her life.

Hayden Panettiere opened up about the way she felt after giving birth

Panettiere gave birth to her daughter, Kaya, in 2014. One year later, she opened up about her painful experience with postpartum depression.

“It’s something a lot of women experience,” she said on Live! With Kelly and Michael. “When [you are told] about postpartum depression, you think it’s ‘I feel negative feelings towards my child; I want to injure or hurt my child.’ I’ve never, ever had those feelings. Some women do.”

She said she wanted to speak up about it because she felt there was a great deal of stigma surrounding postpartum depression.

“There’s a lot of people out there that think that it’s not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their minds, that ‘Oh, it’s hormones.’ They brush it off,” she said. “It’s something that’s completely uncontrollable. It’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.”

In her recent memoir, Panettiere spoke further about her experience. She said that when she met her daughter for the first time, she “felt nothing.”

“I wasn’t OK,” Panettiere wrote in This Is Me: A Reckoning. “I had to figure out how to bond with her. It felt like an insurmountable task, and I was only on the first day.”

She also said she didn’t feel any joy or even anxiety about motherhood. 

“It wasn’t panic that was sitting in my chest. It was nothing,” she wrote. “A total blackout of emotion, like my soul was dead.”

She said that she began to rely on alcohol after welcoming her daughter.

Hayden Panettiere’s relationship also deteriorated after giving birth

Amid her struggle with postpartum depression, Panettiere’s relationship with then-fiancé Wladimir Klitschko deteriorated. When they ended their relationship, Klitschko sought full custody, which Panettiere granted him.

“I remember every second of that day. Every f***ing second,” she wrote. “No mother could forget a single thing about the day she signed her child away.”

She said that this was a heartwrenching decision, but she felt it was the right one.

“It was the hardest thing I could do,” she told People in 2022. “But the best thing for my daughter was to make sure she was okay, take care of myself and make sure I could be a good mom to her. And sometimes that means letting go.”

She also spoke about her relationship with her daughter after giving up custody

Though Panettiere gave up custody of Kaya, she said that they still had a strong bond.

“I have an incredible relationship with her,” Panettiere said on On Purpose With Jay Shetty, adding, “I go travel as much as I can. I see her. I do spend a lot of time on FaceTime with her, but we talk about really deep things.”

She said her top priority was to make sure Kaya knew both her parents loved and supported her.

“I know that she knows that she has two parents that would do anything in the world to make sure that she is happy and healthy, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually,” she said. “She in no way feels abandoned and that’s something that I’ve made sure to stay on top of and be very aware of.”

Panettiere died on Aug. 16, 2026.