Lauren Akins detailed her experience with postpartum depression, recalling feelings of resentment toward husband Thomas Rhett after their first two children became a part of their life.
Akins, 34, detailed her experiences in a short film titled “This Wasn’t the Plan” released by I Am Second on Thursday, July 11. During the “intense” 13-month adoption process to make eldest daughter, Willa Gray, 8, part of their family, Akins discovered she was pregnant.
“A lot of the adoption process really fell on me because I was the one who was able to travel and be with her, and foster to adopt her for those 13 months,” she recalled, noting that Willa Gray was an orphan from Uganda. “There were so many roadblocks, and I became pregnant. I was getting sick and throwing up, like, 50-something times a day. The whole time I was missing my husband.”
Akins admitted she started to “resent” Rhett, 34, because he was on tour the entire time.
“I felt like I was just hanging on by a thread. As I got more and more pregnant, it was just like, ‘Am I going to have this baby over here?’ I don’t want to leave one child to take care of another in America,” she continued. “So, we made the decision for me to come back and get the care that I needed because I was so sick.”
Akins’ parents got to bring Willa Gray home. Three months later, in August 2017, she gave birth to daughter Ada James.
“It kind of felt like we went zero to two pretty quick as parents. I began touring with my husband and I was running myself ragged, just chasing him all over the place, trying to make it feel like it used to,” she recalled. “His life went on and I felt like mine stopped. I felt like we weren’t doing it together anymore.”
There was “a lot of miscommunication” during this time in their relationship, Akins recalled. She was also holding on to “a lot of resentment.” Akins recalled yelling “I hate you” at Rhett after one of their major fights.
“I just hit a breaking point where I didn’t like him and I resented him,” she said, telling her husband that she felt “alone” while he pursued his singing career. To fix their issues, the couple did “a mini intensive counseling session” and put all their issues out on the table.
“We shared everything, and some of it was really hard to hear for each other,” she continued. “So, we really just did a restart, and that was when I feel like our marriage took off.”
Akins and Rhett welcomed their third child, Lennon Love, in February 2020. Things were “cruising” until she got pregnant with baby No. 4. (Lillie Carolina was born in November 2021.)
“The after-effects of having a fourth child really took me under. I felt like I was drowning. I just sunk to the bottom and struggled with postpartum depression,” Akins explained. “I wasn’t myself. I couldn’t get out of bed.”
Akins started physically and spiritually taking care of herself, which ultimately changed her entire mindset.
“From day one, Lillie has consistently been the most easygoing, full of joy in life, child,” Akins said of her fourth child. “I mean, I look at her daily and think, I cannot believe I almost missed you. She’s such a gift to my heart and to her sisters Lennon, Willa Gray, Ada James.”
