Cardi B Gets Honest About Her Postpartum Depression: "The World Was Heavy on My Shoulders"

Since welcoming her first child back in July, Cardi B has been pretty open about the realities of adjusting to motherhood, and that includes her experience with postpartum depression. In a recent cover story for the March issue of Harper's Bazaar, the "Money" rapper chatted briefly about her baby girl, Kulture Kiari Cephus, and revealed that her postpartum depression ended up hitting her very suddenly after giving birth. "I thought I was going to avoid it," she said. "When I gave birth, the doctor told me about postpartum, and I was like, 'Well, I'm doing good right now, I don't think that's going to happen.' But out of nowhere, the world was heavy on my shoulders."

Cardi B welcomed Kulture with her husband, Offset, on July 10, 2018, and she's been candid about the postpartum-related difficulties she's experienced on a few occasions since then. Just four weeks after her baby's arrival, the 26-year-old was forced to pull out of Bruno Mars's 24K Magic Tour, telling her fans via Instagram that she wasn't ready to be away from her newborn just yet. "I thought that after giving birth to my daughter that 6 weeks would be enough time for me to recover mentally and physically," she wrote. "I also thought that I'd be able to bring her with me on tour, but I think I underestimated this whole mommy thing. Not only am I just not ready physically, I'm not ready to leave my baby behind since the doctors explained it's not healthy for her to be on the road."

She later gave more details about her decision in an interview with W. "People don't really talk about what you go through after pregnancy," she told the magazine. "Like, they don't tell you that you get stitches down there or that your first two weeks you're constipated. Or that you get contractions because of breastfeeding. I wasn't expecting that." Though her body eventually began to feel better, Cardi still doesn't quite feel like her old self.

"For some reason, I still don't feel like my body's the same," she continued to Harper's Bazaar. "I feel like I don't have my balance right yet. When it comes to heels, I'm not as good at walking anymore. I feel like I'm holding a weight on me. . . there's an energy I haven't gotten back yet that I had before I was pregnant. It's just the weirdest thing." Harper's Bazaar's March issue hits stands on Feb. 19.