4 min readNew DelhiFeb 25, 2026 05:30 PM ISTMandira Bedi and Raj Kaushal (Express Archives)Mandira Bedi, 53, once candidly spoke about her pregnancy with her son Vir, which happened after 13 years of her marriage to late director Raj Kaushal, who passed away in 2021. “When Raj and I were dating, and we spoke about kids, I told him that I wanted to have one and adopt a daughter. He was fine with the idea. When I got married, I was not ready to have kids for a while. A couple of my contracts didn’t allow me to get pregnant. Then there was someone in my family who was struggling to get pregnant, IVF and all that. I realised, I do want to be a mother. And I won’t let life pass by. The day I decided, honestly, three months later, I was pregnant. I was pregnant, and Vir came along,” Mandira told Humans of Bombay in 2024.She also expressed her thoughts on not feeling connected to her child initially and her struggle with postpartum depression. “I must tell you…when I saw him…I was like…what is this pasty little frog…I have to commit myself and lose my independence because of him…it was not love at first sight…I had a lot of postpartum depression as well…so it took me some time to feel love for him and all that. We romanticise pregnancy and childbirth and even epidural…nobody tells you about postpartum depression. I had the baby, but I was not feeling very connected to him. I would just be crying. The fact that I was horribly overweight, and I couldn’t exercise.”Reasoning that she wasn’t feeling good about herself, Mandira shared that she had put on 22 kilos during her pregnancy. “Somewhere, that depression was connected to the fact that I wasn’t feeling good about myself. I had put on a lot of weight. I had put on 22 kilos, and with the delivery, I lost 3 kilos. So, I walked on the 40th day. And that depression also cleared around that time because all the goodness of exercise kicked in. I was 52 kilos before, and I had to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I am maternal. Once I got used to it, I felt the connection with Vir, and it all changed. Once I became a mother, I realised it was the best thing to have happened to me. I have done the therapy I needed to. And I was like, why did I wait so long, because it was 13 years in our marriage when I got pregnant. I was so busy.”She added, “I had a C-section. My doctor gave me such a clean cut, and I was back to my exercise on the 40th day after delivery.” In May 2017, Mandira shared a post on losing her pregnancy weight (Photo: Mandira Bedi/Instagram)During the conversation, she also shared that she and her family remember Raj every day. “My children and I think of him every day. It’s not like we have forgotten. But I can talk about it without my eyes welling up because I have dealt with it. And the first year was very, very hard. Because the first of everything is just impossible to deal with. And the second one is a little bit easier. And so on. But on all the important occasions, we remember him.”Motherhood is often presented as an instant, overwhelming love story, but psychologically, it is a profound identity shift.According to psychotherapist and life coach Delnna Rrajesh, not every woman feels an immediate connection when she first sees her baby, and that is completely normal. “Postpartum depression can blur bonding, heighten self-criticism, and intensify feelings of loss of independence or changes in body image. Hormones fluctuate, sleep is disrupted, and a woman is adjusting to a new version of herself overnight. Delayed bonding is not a failure of love. It is the nervous system trying to stabilise after physical and emotional shock. With support, movement, therapy and self-compassion, the connection strengthens naturally. Love in motherhood often grows; it does not always explode,” shared Delnna. For more lifestyle news, click here to join our WhatsApp Channel and also follow us on Instagram© IE Online Media Services Pvt Ltd