Naya Rivera Says She ‘Completely Let Myself Go’ During Pregnancy: ‘Weight Wasn’t Something I Wanted to Focus On’
Naya Rivera is in tip-top shape since giving birth in September — but that doesn’t mean she didn’t indulge during her pregnancy.
“I completely let myself go when I was pregnant,” Rivera, 29, says in the May issue of Fit Pregnancy and Baby, adding she had a hankering for meats and sweets in the months leading up to delivery. “Weight wasn’t something I wanted to focus on, so I ate anything and everything and had a blast.”
The former Glee star has had a blast discovering the joys of motherhood, too. Rivera and her husband, former Justified star Ryan Dorsey welcomed their son, Josey Hollis, in September, and he’s completely changed their world.
“You’re always going to wonder if you’re doing things wrong, but that’s what it means to be a mom, to care so much about someone else that you just want to be as perfect as possible,” she told the magazine.
Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter.
One aspect of preparing for baby that didn’t require much thought? Their son’s name. “Ryan already had it picked out before we were even married. You know you have those conversations as a couple—like, ‘If we had kids, here’s what I’d want to name them?’ Well, Ryan had said if he had a boy he’d really want to name him Josey. So we went with that.” His middle name is a family name on Dorsey’s side.
As for when it was time to get to work — and back in the gym — Rivera was game, if ever so hesitantly.
“I was, like, ‘Let’s get back to business,'” she said of her body-after-baby plan, which meant losing the 60 lbs. she’d gained during pregnancy.
The actress said she lost the first 30 lbs. easily, between breastfeeding (“Your body is sustaining a life, which is both crazy and empowering”), eating healthy and doing low-impact exercises. But she was still nervous about losing the last half.
“My closet was divided in half: On one side were maternity clothes and on the other side were clothes I thought I would never wear again,” she said.
With the help of a personal trainer (“I know I’m lucky; not all moms can afford one”), Rivera got back to work after recovering from her emergency c-section. “I’m not really self-motivated. And I don’t know what to do at the gym. I always feel lost. [Without a trainer] I’d probably just end up not working out, and then go to the steam room,” she joked.
So with a mix of three spinning classes a week and a focus on her core during training sessions, she began to shed the weight.
“I did a lot of weight training, which I had never done before,” Rivera says. “I was wearing maternity gear while working my butt off.”
As for her day-to-day mom duties? Because she used to nanny, the star said she actually felt more prepared for diaper duty and feeding than getting back in the gym.
“I was thrown up on and pooped on, so I knew what I was getting into!” she said, though her actor husband, 32, wasn’t quite on the same page yet. “He changed Josey’s first diaper in the hospital, which was hilarious, because Josey just kept continually pooping,” she said, but added that Dorsey has his own tricks up his sleeve. “If Josey doesn’t want to go to sleep, Ryan will bust out his guitar and play him some songs, and Josey will fall asleep immediately. It’s the cutest thing to watch.”
— Jeff Nelson
