Elsie Hewitt and Pete Davidson started dating in March 2025, had daughter Scottie Rose in December, and broke up sometime in late April/early May. Elsie has been candid about her struggles as a single mom and the need to find income. There’s good news on the job front. Elsie has a partnership with Tommee Tippee. She wrote the foreword to their new Feeding Made Simple Guide. Elsie sat down with Parents magazine to talk about how motherhood has changed her. Here are some of the highlights:
Motherhood has changed her: “I’m surprised by the fact that no matter how exhausted I am, I’m somehow ready at all times to do whatever this teeny little thing needs me to do. My ability to keep going, that shift in my energy levels… it feels like a visceral and primal change within me compared to the way I used to operate.”
Piecing it together: Hewitt describes motherhood as a collection of “mini clicks” rather than a single emotional breakthrough. She notes it’s these mini moments that slowly piece together a larger understanding of the experience.
“In the moment, a ‘click’ feels like an answer I’ve been searching for forever,” she explains. “Then, when I zoom out, it feels more like a perfectly placed piece in an intricate puzzle.”
On the pressure to bounce back: “No matter if internal or external, this pressure [to bounce back] is very real. I just did the coolest thing a human is capable of doing. And in the same way that my body knew what to do in order to grow a literal human being, so it’ll do what it needs to do to come back to me.”
Her village shows up for her: Support has become essential during this chapter of her life. She credits close friendships and fellow moms with helping her stay grounded. Her village has been helping her get by with two of her closest friends regularly cooking dinner with her every couple of weeks, a ritual she looks forward to and means a lot to her now.
“We just cook and eat to whatever music is playing,” she explains. “I just know they’re showing up for me in their way, and it means everything to me.”
What she wasn’t prepared for: “The anxiety!!” she says candidly. “Nothing could’ve prepared me for the ways in which my anxiety has manifested.” A 2018 study found that around 20% of postpartum people who had given birth experienced clinical anxiety. Symptoms of PPA can include excessive worrying, racing thoughts, and feelings of dread. It’s always a good idea to seek personal help sooner rather than later.
I like that Elsie brought up how motherhood is a series of “mini-clicks” rather than one big revelation. That’s how it was (and still is) for me. If it was framed like that more often, I think fewer women would try to chase perfection. No one has all of the answers right away! We’re all figuring it out as we go along, and trying to do what’s best for our kids.
Elsie is also right about that visceral and primal change that new mothers experience. For me, those feelings contributed to postpartum anxiety. I didn’t know that PPA was a clinical diagnosis until I read this interview. Doctors talked to me about signs of postpartum depression, but not anxiety. I bet that number would be higher than 20% if it was more widely screened for.
Wow, I also didn’t know PPA was a thing! Or should I say, that it had a name, because I definitely experienced it. We really have come a long way in our broader cultural understanding of mental health in the last 20 years.
Maternal (mental) health is one of the many subcategories of female health that are underfunded — just like the entire field of gender-based medicine and it’s infuriating.
There are so many studies even today that treat women as an afterthought, when we’re statistically more than 50% of the population.
So thank you to Elsie Hewitt, and to everyone, e.g. around here, who shares their struggles, and raises awareness of what women go through, how we’re being sidelined, and what can be done to change it.
Start talking about (shared) experiences is a start. Going public, make ourselves heard. Changing perceptions.
She’s not wrong. The anxiety is real and yes, it was a real change for me, too. I did not realize that I would become so attuned to the needs of that little person literally overnight.
I remember my anxiety was so bad, I was kind of jokingly longing for the depression to kick in as some kind of levelling or mitigation. I felt like one of those characters in a cartoon that plugs its finger into a power socket and all its hair shoots up to stand on end and its eyes bug out. The hardest part was not being able to “sleep when the baby sleeps,” cause my brain just would not shut down like that. It’s five-alarm fire.
She’s such a pretty woman. I’m sorry Pete left her and started singing the praises of Kim Kardashian again, who is in a fake relationship with Lewis Hamilton (whom I adore). How disappointing of Pete. I never disliked him, but it is pretty shitty to leave his girlfriend and newborn daughter like that. Irresponsible and cruel.