Wyatt Russell and wife Meredith are preparing to become parents for the second time, and to celebrate, Meredith has shared a gorgeous picture of her baby bump.
In the snap, the actress poses nude in a bathtub, positioned on a stone tile floor, and flower petals floating in the water, and although it is unclear if it from her first or second pregnancy, the caption pays tribute to the "transition" women go through after becoming a mother, from the positive to the negative – and her words sparked a major reaction in her followers, who praised her honest letter which she said was originally sent to a friend via text.
"When your baby [is] born, you are reborn. This time as a mother. The essence of who you are, all the magic that makes you so singularly YOU is there but she might be a stranger to you for a little while," Meredith penned.
"There’s a new stranger attached to you both physically and energetically, and the you that has been 36 years in the making will exist in a different energy entirely. She exists in the surreal portal of the universe that is: newborn.
"In the late nights, and the cracked nipples, and the flabby stomach. The baby screaming bloody murder and you can’t figure out why. Of course it’s full of blissful moments but we don’t need to talk about that here because society gives us that narrative. 'Isn’t it bliss? Aren't you obsessed? Aren't you in love?' people would say, and I would look back with a dumb blank face feeling like I was a horrible mother for not feeling that instantaneously. And yet, now that my son is two, I have romanticized those early days so much that I find myself saying the same saccharine oversimplifications which in no way connect to the authentic experience of a wildly nuanced and complex time."
Meredith, who welcomed her first son in 2021, continued: "I felt so lonely and tired in those early days. And I wish someone had told me how normal that is, and how it’s no way indicative of the mother I would be.
"Looking back if I had only looked at this time as a surreal hole in the universe and in time where time is not what it has ever been, you are not who you’ve ever been , your partner is being reborn as well so your relationship is not as it’s ever been, and to tread lightly because it’s all merely a season, and as is in all life, we will end up coming out of a season looking back and viewing it as one of the most beautiful hard poetic shocking loving soul melting heavenly hellish moments in time.
"So know when you’re eating a slice of pizza over your baby's head, and your partner is exhausted and The Bachelor is on in the background and every idea of motherhood existing in an Instagram-filtered-Doen-dress-wearing-heaven has been shattered, know that it’s a gust of wind. And not long in the not so distant future you and your baby will be dancing together in the kitchen to Lizzo and you’ll bring your unique you-ness to your mothering, and you and your lover will be out at a party and you all will be hiking together and it will all be as it should be.
"I promise you you will be the most amazing mother. I know."
Marvel star Wyatt confirmed that they were expecting their second child in an interview with E! News in November, sharing how their son Buddy is "rolling with the tide" when it comes to being a big brother.
"Buddy understands there's a baby in the belly, but when the baby actually comes out, he's gonna be like, 'Oh my god, that's a real thing,'" he joked.
Wyatt, the only son of Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, met wife Meredith while on set, filming comedy drama Folk Hero & Funny Guy in 2016; Kurt and Goldie also met while filming Swing Shift in 1983, and they went on to co-star in a slew of other popular movies, including Overboard and The Christmas Chronicles.
Wyatt and Meredith's second baby will be Goldie and Kurt's eighth grandchild; Goldie's eldest son Oliver Hudson shares kids Wilder Brooks, 15, Bodhi Hawn, 13, and Rio Laura, ten with his wife Erinn Bartlett, who he married in 2006.
His younger sister Kate has three children as well; she shares her eldest son Ryder Robinson, 19, with her Chris Robinson, middle son Bingham "Bing" Bellamy, 12, with Matt Bellamy, and daughter Rani Rose, five, with her fiancé Danny Fujikawa.