Christina Applegate, 44, has been through a lot. Applegate underwent a double mastectomy and reconstruction in 2008 after cancer was found in one of her breasts. She decided not to take any chances after seeing her mother suffer from breast cancer and a recurrence. (Her mother thankfully survived.) Around the time that she revealed her cancer diagnosis, there was speculation that Applegate did not get chemotherapy as she was hoping for a baby. She had daughter Sadie Grace, with her then-fiance/now husband, Martyn LeNoble, in 2011. Applegate called Sadie her “miracle baby” and told Ellen at the time that “I’ve been kind of sad for a long time, and she’s just opened my whole soul.” Five years later and Applegate is just as enamored with her daughter as ever, which is sweet. In a new interview with People promoting Bad Moms, she got teary when talking about Sadie.
What is something you didn’t know about motherhood before you became a mom?
I love my kid more than I’ve ever known possible. Like, humanly possible. It’s a spiritual thing. I really love her. The level of love. I feel bad. There were times I didn’t treat my mom all that great. I had no idea how much she loved me. Now, I love my kid [fans face]. Here it goes.When you see a pregnant woman what is one thing you wish you could tell her?
Kegel it up – Prepare the area for world war. Like I’d walk up to some pregnant lady and be like ‘take care of your vagina right now.’ Oil that thing up. Squeeze it.
People’s video features Applegate and her co-star, Annie Mumolo. They also cut to a separate interview with her other costars, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn, who describe being apart from their kids as “missing a limb.” They both say that love for their kids runs deep and is profound and indescribable. They also explain that the time with their children goes so fast, which I used to not understand until I saw my own kid grow up.
As for Applegate getting teared up about her daughter, I get it. I didn’t realize I could care about anyone so much. It also took me having my son to understand how much my mother loved and sacrificed for us. I wasn’t able to have a good relationship with her until I realized that and stopped being so selfish, but I guess that’s not specific to giving birth and can happen at any stage in life.
I went through Applegate’s Twitter (she doesn’t Instagram much) and she doesn’t post many photos of Sadie, but she did have this one. She also gushes about her husband a lot!
I don't usually show pics of my kid. But this photo celebrating pride, needed to be shared!#LoveWins pic.twitter.com/3X13BBNMX3
— christina applegate (@1capplegate) June 29, 2015
photos credit: Pacific Coast News and FameFlynet
She is just so lovely.
I guess this is a movie where these questions make sense and she sounds like such a lovely person. But I always wonder … who are mothers describing this love for? Because other parents know. So is it for us non-parents? And if you can’t describe it, why does everyone keep trying? This might be just me, currently surrounded and annoyed by new parents who tell me I MUST have a baby or my life is wasted, but my mom and I have a great relationship so I gain nothing from these discussions and I keep wondering who are you talking to?
Wait until their children are teenagers. They’ll be telling you you were smart, assuming you never had children. From my own experience, I think it’s part sincere, and part envy of your freedom. People get very invested in their choices and need to convince you, and possibly themselves, that they made this amazing choice and anyone who doesn’t is missing out. People who are genuinely happy with their choice don’t need your approval.
“You gotta have a baby!!!” Sorry Seinfeld moment.
No you don’t children to be more compassionate or loving, just look at the many ( too many ) stories of child abuses and neglect. I’m 37 and I have never experienced a proper, functioning, loving relationship with a partner. I have my son and that’s an unconditional love but been a single mum is hard. Look I suppose I’m trying to say is, love and bonds come in different forms and why some may have that with a partner, others may have it with a sibling, child or friend.
I always wonder this myself, even as a mother. I mean, everybody knows that kids are delightful, infuriating, time-consuming and all that jazz and that parents love them regardless, right? But if you don’t want kids you’re not being excluded from anything, are you? You’re just choosing other positive (to you) things for your life, presumably.
But I come from a large, close extended family. So the parent-child special love thing has always taken a back seat to being raised by the family village, as it were. As a child, I had loads of people to go to with my dreams and miseries, not just my parents. Same today for the Sixlets.
So perhaps I’m just not a proper mother in these terms, and therefore I don’t get it?!
Ourselves.
I think we are recounting this love to ourselves because it’s unfathomable for so many of us selfish souls to imagine this crazy stupid love that happens when you see your child. Everyone tells you about it, but until
It happens you just have no idea how it can crush you and fill you with hope simultaneously.
BUT I also feel a similar love for my two yorkie puppies, which I never imagined I could, so I don’t think it is exclusive just to biologically born children.
Interesting. And makes sense.
Um, she was asked a question and described her experience. Who is Chris Walken talking to when he describes his love for his cats? Non-pet owners because he’s judgy?
I was genuinely asking why parents do this. If it’s because they’re just so happy they need to share, fine. But it usually comes with a whiff of superiority, in my experience. Like GNAT said, those who are really happy don’t usually go on and on and on about it. And I wasn’t talking about Christina A. specifically because she was, in fact, asked. I never ask and parents still tell me. I mean if I’m so over the moon and I think everyone else must be so miserable because they just don’t know, I don’t usually rub it in their face. Parents often don’t seem to have that problem.
I’m quite thankful for the two women in my life who told me “Look, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me but make no mistake, it’s hard. And I’m not having a second one.”
Also, I don’t know who Chris Walken is talking to either. I’m not getting a cat so leave me alone.
Perfectly nice story, but I get bored with idea that you have to have children to know how deeply your mother loved you, or to love deeply yourself. Some people never love deeply, some do, some get it once they have children, some get it without having children. We grow by experiencing challenges to our existing capabilities and world view. Many things can contribute to growth. You don’t have to give birth to become a more loving, compassionate person.
Agree 100%
You are right. Most of the child free women I know are serious mamas to their pets, tho. How a person treats other beings in general is a measure of her character, and goes beyond reproducing. In my case, spending most of my life believing I don’t deserve love (something I still struggle with) meant I was terrified when I got pregnant. A birth control switch and bam, baby. Choosing to keep her meant following through with a serious life consequence, something I hadn’t done for years. And when she got here, the immediate sense of belonging and love that came with her really changed everything for me. It is a wonderful spiritual thing… that I generally keep to myself, lol.
Oh, I’m not denying that to a person who has the capacity to grow, having a child would be a beautiful, spiritual, highly meaningful experience, and a good bond between parent and child is a bond unlike any other. And there is nothing wrong with sharing that. I just roll my eyes when people think every woman who gives birth experiences this, since they obviously don’t, or that people who don’t have children are somehow less able to love or to comprehend what “real” love is. I’m so happy for you and for your leap of faith that allowed you to find the depth of that love.
Yes GNAT I totally agree. That you have to have kids to “really know love” is an annoyingly obtuse and limited point of view, and it wouldn’t be so intolerable but it gets told to childless folk ALL THE TIME. It’s ignorant to assume you know more about love than another person. If I can’t “understand” what you feel by having kids, who’s to say that in my childless life I haven’t gained some insights someone with kids “couldn’t possibly understand”? Point is, nothing makes you or I better than the other. We all go through life and experience things that change us and it’s unfair and small-minded to proclaim that any one life path is the key to love omnipotence. Let’s respect each other’s choices. We all have an equal capacity to love!
(Disclaimer: Not that that’s what Christina is saying here, I’m just on a tear because I’m tired of people in general climbing up my uterus and life and telling me what I should be doing with it.)
Exactly! And I am also not pointing this at Christina, because she was talking about her own experience. Just recalling all the times I’ve been told that I don’t know what “real” love feels like, etc.
If I’ve never been with a man romantically, how can I really understand what it is to be in love? Same goes for being a parent and the love of a child. True it’s not a sufficient condition, but it is almost a necessary one, I’d wager.
Celebwatch yes I don’t personally know the feeling of a parent’s love for their child. It’s not something I’ve experienced, so that’s not in question and it’s not offensive. What offends me is being told that because I don’t have kids I don’t “truly know what love is” IN GENERAL.
I totally get what you’re saying, but I think everyone’s experiences are their own, right? I knew my mother loved me, but I will say that having kids (and not when they were babies, but as they’ve gotten older) has made me aware of the depth of my parents’ love. Maybe because I’m getting ready to send my oldest to college, but there is something to what she’s saying. I also think for Christina there has to be the added element of having had cancer-it makes her more sensitive.
I agree. And I’d like to clarify my above comments by adding that I absolutely think parent/child love is special, unique and amazing, and I acknowledge that it’s not something I could fully understand unless experienced. That’s a true statement and I think it’s a beautiful thing. I would never want to diminish that. But you wouldn’t believe how many people take that a stretch further and tell you basically your life is meaningless, you’re a selfish freak, and you don’t know what love is nor do you love anything at all (except yourself, you selfish ass) if you don’t have kids. THAT’S what makes my eye twitch.
I’ve always loved Christina – she strikes me as funny and cool and that we’d be really good mates.
But I am a mother to three boys and I love them with all the passion of a thousand suns but they also drive me mental. Normal non celebrity parents hardly ever talk like Christina does about their kids because they are absolutely exhausted from all the, let’s face it, fricken hard work that is required to keep small people clean, fed, watered and loved.
I’m not saying that she loves her kid more than me…I’m saying that when you have the luxury of help/cleaners/babysitters/nannies (she must have at least one) you’re probably way more inclined to talk like that.
Plus I have two teens and they have transmogrified from sunny, congenial and delightful into Satans brethren seemingly overnight…just sayin’.
My own mother was a complete 1970’s mother in that she smoked, drank and told us all to bugger off outside and not bother her. This style of parenting is no longer in fashion but somehow I find it a whole lot less irritating than the ‘my child is an angel and J worship her’ thing that gets bandied around a lot of late.
Snowpea I loved your comment xo
Aww thanks Aussie Girl. It must be the ‘bugger off outside’ bit. All Aussie mums used to say that while puffing on a Winnie Blue 😉
+1000
Words cannot describe the bond and love I have with my kids. It’s on a level that is not on this earth. I’m not trying to describe it to non-parents to let them know what they are missing or to understand how deeply my mother loved me. I love my kids now (ages 16 and 20) even more than what I thought I did when they were little. They have given me so much happiness and joy that it will kill me when they finally leave the nest. I will need serious drugs to get through it!!
I can’t hate on someone who shares their truth in love. She’s talking from a place of love about her child because that is her reality right now. That’s an amazing thing to encourage. It doesn’t mean someone has to emulate her to know happiness or appreciate their mother, she is only describing her perceptive. In a world that is continually talking about hate, this was a nice message to relay and topic to discuss.
So…while I agree with the comments above questioning why women say something like this…I do feel the need to point out that Christina probably went through genuine fear that she wouldn’t be able to have a child due to her cancer. I’m not trying to say that women that struggle to conceive love their children more than those where pregnancy just happened but as someone who has gone through a 6+ year long battle with health struggles that have caused infertility and fear…it is a DIFFERENT journey. And I think sometimes mothers who got pregnant easily don’t really realize or have the sensitivity to understand that, yes, our journey is DIFFERENT than yours was. I’m not saying that you appreciate it more or you love your kids more. But I can tell you right now that it absolutely changes your POV on everything when you struggle to have children. You experience fear and pain that people who have not gone through it just CANNOT understand. And, I do believe that when you finally (if you are lucky enough) are able to get pregnant your worldview is grateful for the child in a way that someone who didn’t struggle just might not get. That’s what I’m getting from Applegate here. Her cancer altered the course of her life and, to her, this daughter truly might feel like a miracle that she never thought she would have. A dream fulfilled that she thought might have died. Just something to keep in mind. Yes, all parents love their children equally but for those of us where conceiving is a years long battle of pain and agony….it is a DIFFERENT kind of miracle if and when it finally happens. And it would help it more mothers had the ability to recognize that.
I totally agree.
I love her. She is so cute and my God is she ever right about the Kegel’s….I sure do wish I had known then what I know now. After 3 over 8 lb babies and numerous half and full marathons my bladder is toast.
Love her.
I love her and I’m so glad she’s come out of the cancer ok. I love what she said about her daughter. I feel that way, too, in moments, even though my son is 7. Watching the FLOTUS give her speech last night, talking about her two girls, hit me in the mama heart. Sometimes I just wish the mothers of the world could get together and solve problems together. Ideology doesn’t matter as much when it comes down to the love moms have for their kids.