Doting mum Billie Piper has admitted struggling with postnatal depression following her son’s birth.
The pretty actress hit rock- bottom when she returned to work as a screen prostitute on hit TV series Secret Diary of a Call Girl.
It was five months after her difficult 26-hour labour and emergency Caesaraen to have baby Winston.
But the determined star, 27, refused to take any medication for her baby blues.
Describing her ordeal she said: “The doctor said I had post-natal depression.
“Secret Diary was a stressful time. I had started leaving Winston. I was finishing breast-feeding, which is really emotional.
“I don’t know what warrants post-natal depression.
“They prescribed pills but I never took them. Pills frighten me. They’re a road to nowhere. I feel I’m too strong in mind and spirit for pills.
“I didn’t feel it was that desperate – it was just a bad day.”
Billie, who had Winston in October 2008, has battled mental illness before.
She previously admitted suffering anorexia when she hit the pop charts aged 15, and when her marriage to Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans fell apart.
Now wed to Lewis actor Laurence Fox, 31, she insists she is happier than ever.
And the latest photos of her in a retro basque and clinging skirt for Glamour magazine show she has no issues with her body image.
Billie told the mag: “I eat normal food. I eat more now because when you have a kid you have to sit down and set an example of healthy and social living. I’m definitely more comfortable in my own skin than I was 10 years ago.
“I think you just give up that quest for the perfect knees and bulging hip bones.
“No matter how much I starve myself I will always have big hips, big knees, bunions. You come to terms with it.”
And Billie – soon appearing in raunchy scenes in BBC drama A Passionate Woman – added: “Having a baby has changed my body and I quite like what it’s done.
“I think it’s because you never stop, you never sit down, and it has speeded up my metabolism.”
But whether she has more kids will depend on how her quest for fame in Hollywood goes.
She is jetting over in the next few months, leaving Winston and Laurence at home in West Sussex.
“I’m going to sniff out there and see if I can get any scraps of work,” she explained.
“I think maybe I should have done it when I was 23.
“You can’t just up sticks and live selfishly, you have to consider other people – shock, horror.
“I’m nervous about it. Thinking of going into an audition room brings me out in a cold sweat. I’m nervous about being seduced by it all as well.
“I’ll either come away from America saying, ‘We need to breed right now, I can’t touch that world,’ or I’ll go, ‘Is it OK if we have an only child?’
Her dream role would be in a musical film – maybe even an adaptation of ITV2′s Secret Diary, in which she plays real-life hooker Belle de Jour.
She laughed: “I’m sure it would upset people, the idea of singing prostitutes – but it would be hilarious.”
READ the full interview in the May issue of GLAMOUR, on sale from Thursday 8th April.
