“I pushed for two and a half hours,” the Dancing With the Stars pro, 27, exclusively told Us Weekly on Wednesday, February 10, of her birth. ” I was fully dilated and the baby just did not want to come out. He just was, like, stuck underneath my pelvis for so long. His heart rate started going really high. So we had to do an emergency C-section and obviously, we did whatever was right for the baby.”

The Utah native called the experience “traumatic,” saying that her baby boy “wasn’t coming out.” She explained to Us that she wasn’t “prepared” for the C-section that followed.

“I had in my head that I was not going to do that at all,” the Emmy nominee said. “We’re just really happy that he’s healthy. That’s the most important thing.”

Since welcoming her and husband Carson McAllister’s infant, the dancer has “been unlucky” with every aspect of motherhood besides nursing.

“I feel totally fine,” Carson told Us of breast-feeding. “Like, I don’t feel any pain. I feel like the milk let down, which is a little bit painful, but nothing I can’t handle. He’s been really good from day one. He’s latched really well. He feeds really good.”

The So You Think You Can Dance alum has been struggling to heal from her surgery, though, telling Us that she was “slower to recover” and had a hard time walking up her stairs. “It is just so weird to me,” the new mom said. “My body’s used to that extreme, push it to the limit, 24 hours a day, all day, [action].”

The experience has been “humbling,” she added, noting, “I had so many wrong expectations. Like, I think I just went in with such high expectations. I’m going to have a great birth. I’m going to recover so quickly. I’m going to bounce back. And it just was the complete opposite of what I thought.”

Leo arrived on January 3, six months after Carson’s pregnancy announcement. The couple have been married since 2016 and are “growing closer together” as parents. “Watching him be a father is, like, the most amazing thing because it’s just been us two for years,” she gushed to Us. “It just melts your heart and you just love him that much more.”

With reporting by Christina Garibaldi

This story originally appeared on: US Magazine - Author:Riley Cardoza