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'I thought I was a bad mother': Katherine Heigl

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As an actress, Katherine Heigl has experienced the pinnacles of success, including an Emmy award for her role in Grey’s Anatomy, but her introduction to motherhood was far less glamorous, the UK Daily Mail reports.

Heigl and her husband Josh Kelley became first-time parents in 2009 when they adopted a 10-month old South Korean girl named Naleigh, and Heigl says she expected to bond with her new baby daughter immediately.

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So when Naleigh initially rejected her, Heigl admits her confidence as a mother was shaken, and she felt like a failure.

‘At first I blamed myself and thought I was a bad mother. I fought incredibly hard for my daughter to accept me as a mother,’ she said. ‘Her rejection almost broke my heart.’

Heigl tried to fight the feelings of inadequacy by throwing herself into her acting work, but soon discovered that being away from her family was in fact making the problem worse.

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When she returned, Heigl says she realised that her husband had developed an ‘effortless’ bond with Naleigh, which prompted the realisation that perhaps she was trying too hard.

‘Josh hadn’t put any pressure on himself, he was just himself, where I was trying to be the perfect mother,’ she told CNN. ‘I learned a lot from him, actually. I started following his lead and just had to let it go.'

Heigl says it took a year of working on the relationship before her daughter really trusted her, and says that two years on, the pair have a very tight bond.

Heigl and Kelley say they would definitely consider adopting another child, although they haven’t ruled out the possibility of having a biological child of their own either.

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