Hailey Bieber covers the “Summer” issue of Vogue Magazine. Once you look through the editorial, you might wonder why in the world Vogue chose THIS shot for their cover. Hailey is, in my opinion, very photogenic and some of the other shots would have made a much better (and more natural) cover. Anyway, this is Hailey’s first major interview since becoming a mother. She gave birth to son Jack last August, and there’s been media chaos ever since. I actually don’t think Hailey and Justin are particularly chaotic, but the energy forced upon them is so weird. Anyway, Hailey spoke to Vogue about childbirth, her marriage, her business and more. Some highlights:

Coming up with Rhode, a billion-dollar business: “I think from having worked with so many different makeup artists and trying different facialists, estheticians, all these different people. I realized that it doesn’t take much for you to have a good routine, and it doesn’t take much for skin care to be great.” Rhode doesn’t share figures, but Reuters and Business of Fashion reported in April that Hailey was exploring a sale and that Rhode could fetch more than $1 billion. “I never, ever thought or expected it to turn into this. In my wildest dreams, it’s already gone beyond what I would’ve hoped for.”

She thought she would start a family earlier: “I was not in a place for that at all…. Now I just think it happens to every person exactly when it’s supposed to. I really, really, really believe that….The pregnancy was difficult for me to wrap my head around. It was a surprise, and you go through a lot of emotions.”

Childbirth: “Giving birth was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she says, despite having spent nine months diligently prepping. Breathing exercises, acupuncture, yoga, pelvic-floor therapy, workouts, walking, weight training: “I was on that sh-t. I was doing everything. I felt stronger physically than I ever had before.” But the spontaneous labor she hoped for didn’t happen. She began leaking amniotic fluid at 39 weeks and was induced. The doctors used Pitocin, a medication that provokes contractions, and a Foley balloon, in which a catheter-​like device is inserted into the uterus and inflated with saline to get the cervix to dilate: It’s a famously uncomfortable combination. “That sh-t was so crazy. That was not fun. They broke my water. I went into labor and I labored for a few hours. No epidural, nothing.” It was 18 hours from start to finish.

Postpartum hemorrhage: “I trust my doctor with my life. And so I had peace that I knew she would never let anything happen to me. But I was bleeding really badly, and people die, and the thought crosses your mind.” In the delivery room, Hailey’s doctors inserted a Jada device, a vacuum apparatus that provokes uterine contractions. It hurt, and no one could guarantee this would stop the bleeding, but she had to endure the treatment for hours. “I wanted to hold my baby. I wanted to be with him.”

She wants more kids though: She plans to take it “a kid at a time.” Because things go right too. Your partner suddenly sees you “like, ‘My woman is a god. A superhero. I could never.’  At least that was the case for me.” Says Justin of his family’s expansion from two to three: “I’m walking in the days I always dreamed of.”

Postpartum: She got a new therapist; she dug into her feelings; she took the placenta pills she was told might help prevent postpartum depression, and has kept taking the prenatal vitamins too. She felt the “high highs and low lows” and rode the roller coaster of her hormones. It was hard: She didn’t always recognize her body and struggled with postpartum body dysmorphia, “self-hatred” of a tenor she’d never experienced before, she tells me. At her lowest she would scour cruel online comments for validation, confirmation that she looked as bad as she felt, and then get depressed when she found them, and mad at herself for looking. “Every day I have to talk to myself, like, Hailey, you had a baby. You grew a human. You birthed a human. It’s okay. Give yourself grace. Give yourself time.”

Her marriage is fine: “It’s not real,” she says of most of what’s written about her. “And that’s the thing: I have a real life. My real life is that I get to wake up to my beautiful family and my son and my friends and I have people that know me and love me and I love them… Being postpartum is the most sensitive time I’ve ever gone through in my life, and learning a new version of myself is very difficult. And to be doing that all the while going on the internet every day and people being like, They’re getting divorced and They’re this and They’re not happy: It is such a mindf–k. I cannot even begin to explain it. It’s a crazy life to live.”

Hailey says her haters can die mad: “Well, I thought seven years in it would’ve already, and it hasn’t. You would think after having a child, people would maybe move on, chill out a little bit, but no,” she shrugs with a cheesy Who, me? grin: “So I guess these bitches are going to be mad.”

[From Vogue]

Hailey does sound different here than her pre-motherhood interviews. She sounds more confident, she sounds more settled and peaceful. I appreciate the fact that she’s admitting that it took a lot of work to get there though, that she had to work on it in therapy and she had to do the work of maturing and preparing and growing. Within the piece, Justin is quoted (he sent an email to Vogue), saying that the smartest decision he ever made was marrying Hailey. She’s a stabilizing force on him, and he adores his wife. And yes, all of the sh-t about “they’re getting a divorce, he’s so unhappy with her” is goofy as hell. I hope Hailey genuinely feels like her haters are going to be mad no matter what she does, so she should just live her life.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, cover courtesy of Vogue.