"To see my body change inside and out so drastically has been a wild experience. Surprising and beautiful."
Emma Roberts is getting real about the ups and downs of being pregnant during lockdown.
In a candid interview with Cosmopolitan for their December/January issue, the actress, who bared her baby bump on the magazine's cover, opened up about her life as an expectant mother amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Emma Roberts Hilariously Recalls How Her Mom Accidentally Revealed Her Pregnancy
View Story"Long story short: I am hungry and tired. Food and sleep do not abide by the normal laws when you're pregnant. But I'm healthy, which is the thing I'm most grateful for," began Roberts.
"To see my body change inside and out so drastically has been a wild experience. Surprising and beautiful," she said. "Then again, some days I feel like I'm being hijacked by something."
The "Holidate" star, who is expecting her first child, a baby boy, with boyfriend Garrett Hedlund, went on to admit that when she was younger she thought she'd be married with children by age 24. Now, after getting pregnant at 29, Roberts said she's learned that "the only plan you can have is that there is no plan."
"At 16, I thought, 'By the time I'm 24, I'll be married with kids,'" she told the publication. "And then I was 24 and I was like, 'Remember when I said I would be married with kids by now?' With work, especially with acting -- the travel, the hours -- it's not always conducive to settling down in a traditional way."
The "Scream Queens" star's plans also changed after she was diagnosed with endometriosis, which can impact a woman's fertility.
"It really started to come to the forefront of my mind when, a few years ago, I learned that I've had undiagnosed endometriosis since I was a teenager," Roberts recalled. "I always had debilitating cramps and periods, so bad that I would miss school and, later, have to cancel meetings...In my late 20s, I just had a feeling I needed to switch to a female doctor. It was the best decision. She ran tests, sent me to a specialist. Finally, there was validation that I wasn't being dramatic. But by then, it had affected my fertility."
"I was told, 'You should probably freeze your eggs or look into other options.' I said, 'I'm working right now. I don't have time to freeze my eggs,'" she continued. "To be honest, I was also terrified. Just the thought of going through that and finding out, perhaps, that I wouldn’t be able to have kids."
Although Roberts said she did end up freezing her eggs, she admitted the process was "difficult."
"When I found out about my fertility, I was kind of stunned," she told the publication. "It felt so permanent, and oddly, I felt like I had done something wrong."
While the "American Horror Story" actress ultimately became pregnant, she refrained from publicly announcing it at first, just in case it "wasn't going to work out."
"It sounds cheesy, but the moment that I stopped thinking about it, we got pregnant. But even then, I didn't want to get my hopes up," she explained. "Things can go wrong when you're pregnant. That's something you don't see on Instagram. So I kept it to myself, my family, and my partner, not wanting to make grand plans if it wasn't going to work out. This pregnancy made me realize that the only plan you can have is that there is no plan."