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 tour.