Mendes addresses why the couple had chosen to be so secretive about their child. “Whether we like it or not, privacy is going to be very difficult for Esmeralda,” she shares. “I think it’s unfair but that’s our reality. So Ryan and I decided early on to give her as much privacy as we could. And my pregnancy was the first opportunity to give her that.”
She also reveals how she feels about tabloids tracking celebs’ pregnancies. “I find the media’s “bump watch” obsession to be both intrusive and stressful,” she confesses. “So I made a decision to eject myself from it completely. I was like, ‘Annnnd I’m out.'”
Like many new moms, Mendes says that she’s “constantly” scarred that she’s doing something wrong, adding “for me that part of being a mother at this early stage is the struggle of not being able to sleep and not knowing what I’m doing and really going through it with her and battling out those nights.”
“I’m completely exhausted,” she adds. “I thought my wild nights were over but these are some of the wildest nights I’ve ever had.”
Mendes says that she and Gosling chose the name Esmeralda because they both “love the Esmeralda character from the Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame and just think it’s a beautiful name.” The baby’s middle name, Amada, was Mendes’ grandmother’s name. It means “beloved” in Spanish.
Photo: Getty
