Honesty hour! Reese Witherspoon got candid about how worried she felt when she became a mother at age 23.
“I’ve been a mom since 1999. I got pregnant [with Ava] when I was 22 and delivered when I was 23,” the Oscar winner recalled in a Thursday, September 26, YouTube video on her Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine channel. “To be totally honest, it was scary. I was scared. I didn’t know what it was going to do to my job or my career. Your entire life will change — everything you believe, every piece of food you eat, every piece of independence you have. You can’t go out without thinking of another person.”
After giving birth to her daughter, Ava, now 20, the actress went on to welcome her son Deacon, now 15, with her then-husband, Ryan Phillippe. Following the former couple’s split, Witherspoon married Jim Toth in 2011 and had their now 6-year-old son, Tennessee, the following year.
As anxious as she was about having kids, Witherspoon opened up about why she’s glad she delivered them when she did. “I find that having little kids is more physical and it’s just really hard on your body, so I am glad that I had kids kind of young. I had one at 23, one at 27 and then again at 37,” the Whiskey in a Teacup author explained. “And oh, my God, having a baby at 37 was so much harder. This is just me being real.”
The New Orleans native feels very fulfilled as a mother of three. “Being a mom is really great,” she said. “It’s a big part of my life. I would say it’s the biggest part of my life being a mom to my three kids. … I love my kids.”
In June 2018, a source told Us Weekly exclusively how close the Big Little Lies alum is with her brood — her eldest, especially. “[She and Ava] are best friends,” the insider told Us at the time. “They just love being together. Reese and Ava talk several times a day and they go to each other for everything. [Ava] has learned so much by being with her mom and traveling the world with her.”
The source added, “Reese is honest with her kids and they feel comfortable talking to her about anything. She’s equally involved in all of their lives.”
