Penn Badgley Says His Heart Stopped Repeatedly as a Premature Baby: My Mom Had to 'Resuscitate Me'

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Penn Badgley is opening up about a scary medical condition he had as a premature baby.

While appearing on the latest episode of HypochondriActor⁠ — the Hazy Mills podcast hosted by Sean Hayes and comedian and physician Dr. Priyanka Wali — the actor, 36, spoke candidly about how his premature birth still affects him.

Noting he was "two months premature," Badgley explained that he's "learned a lot about prenatal, postpartum stuff and realized how much it did impact me" thanks to his wife Domino Kirke's role as a dula.

He described what he went through. "The first year of my life, well, for the first couple of weeks, I was in a NICU, because my heart and lungs would stop repeatedly throughout the day, so I was on my heart monitor," he said.

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Jenny Anderson/Getty Actor Penn Badgely turned 35 on Monday, Nov. 1

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The You star then told Hayes and Wali that his mother had to learn "how to resuscitate me, like viscerally," given that the act had previously been done "by doctors for the first couple of weeks" of his life.

"[She had to do it] multiple times a day because my heart and lungs would stop," he continued. "And I was on a monitor that would just beep very loudly."

The first time his mother had to resuscitate him, Badgley said, "was on the way home from the hospital, when I was released from the NICU." He added, "[The doctors] basically said, like, 'This will happen immediately, so you're going to have to [help him],' and [it lasted] until about one."

"I think by the time I was one it had gotten to the point where, like, my cousins will tell stories where ... where I would be in the back seat, you know, in a car seat hooked up to the monitor, and it would go off, and all anybody had to do is just touch me," Badgley said. "So just human touch would wake me up."

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Badgley then explained that he hasn't "spoken to my mom about the particulars in a while," though he said it "would be interesting because the effect that it's had on me, at least in a sort of emotional way, is I'm extremely sensitive to touch."

"I just noticed that in my life, and I realized later that it's probably pretty significant," he continued. "And I'm sort of I'm kind of like bird boned, like I'm smaller than my father a bit."

Badgley also noted that he is "a very spiritual person" and he believes that stems from "the fact that I was more or less flatlining multiple times a day for the first year."

"Death doesn't scare me," the Gossip Girl alum added. "That sounds weird to say, but ... there's some aspect to that where I feel like there's a gravity to the earliest experiences I had ... like I can have a mode that is very solitary and meditative."

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Badgley further explained that his experiences help him relate to his son, who is now 2 years old.

"I started to think throughout the first year [of his life], like, if that was me, I was constantly flatlining," he said. "And by the time you're a year old, knowing my son — my biological son the way that I do, because I have a stepson as well, he is 13 years old — but you have so much personality and consciousness going on even by the time you're a couple of months old, but especially a year old."

"Like if my son, who I now know so well, was flatlining during the first year of his life, multiple times a day, the idea that wouldn't influence him is ridiculous," Badgley continued.

He added: "Thinking of my toddler now, I realize it actually did affect me. It affected my sense of what life is like, what life is not like. ... My toddler is so joyful and I think I might've been too, but it would mark him."