While some consider motherhood to be a full-time job, new mum Eva Mendes has joked that being a parent is "cake", it's the babies that have the real struggles.
The 40-year-old actress welcomed her first child, daughter Esmeralda Amada, in September with partner Ryan Gosling and while she's still adjusting to life as a mother, she thinks it's her little girl that has the hardest time.
"Everything is a struggle for her. For instance, I haven't thrown up since the 90s and she's thrown up twice since we started this interview," she joked to The Violet Files. "Motherhood is cake compared to what it's like to be a baby."
Eva and Ryan met on the set of The Place Beyond The Pines in 2011 and began dating shortly after, and it seems that the couple have a lot in common - there weren't even any disagreements when it came to baby names!
Eva and Ryan welcomed daughter Esmeralda in September (FameFlynet)
"Ryan and I both love the Esmeralda character from the Victor Hugo novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and we just think it's a beautiful name," she explained. "Amada was my grandmother's name. It means 'beloved' in Spanish."
The Hitch actress - who has been fairly closeted about her relationship with Ryan over the years - decided to keep her pregnancy under wraps, and plans to adopt the same private nature with her daughter now she's born.
"Whether we like it or not, privacy is going to be very difficult for Esmeralda. I think it's unfair but that's our reality," she said. "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."
As a first-time mum, Eva admitted that she sometimes looks online for support from other mums when she's struggling with how to do something. "[I] read the comment section from other mothers because I find so much solace in that," she revealed. "Just knowing that I'm not alone out there and that other mums have gone through the same thing can at least get me through the night."
