HTGAWM's Aja Naomi King Welcomes 1st Child, Shows Postpartum Body
Welcome to motherhood! Aja Naomi King revealed on Sunday, June 6, that she gave birth to her first child.
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“No, this is not a pregnancy Before picture. This is the After,” the How to Get Away With Murder alum, 36, captioned an Instagram slideshow. “After days of labor. After experiencing what felt like my insides being ripped apart, no lie. After experiencing the unimaginable beauty of childbirth, this is what is left behind. This Gorgeous Body! So in celebration of myself and my body for ‘Doing the Damn Thing,’ I wanted to share this photo. No makeup, no editing, no filters (and you know I love a filter!) Just Me. A woman in awe of her Body and her Baby!”
King announced in March that she was pregnant with her rainbow baby. “I really can’t begin to express the fullness of our immense joy to be welcoming a baby into our family,” the actress captioned her Instagram baby bump debut. “With that, I also want to express that this beautiful journey has not been devoid of heartbreak.”
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The Los Angeles native explained that she had previously suffered two miscarriages, writing, “Even now trying to capture what it felt like in words is simply absurd to me because I will never have language enough for it. I felt like so many other people had way worse experiences than I did, but I realized that I can’t treat pain like an Olympic sport, as if it’s a competition and only those who have the worst stories win the right to talk about it. No matter the size of it in your mind, pain is pain and loss is loss, whatever the degree. And once you are touched by it, it stays with you forever.”
King carried that fear into her pregnancy, she went on to write. “To believe that it’s real and that this baby will be OK,” the then-pregnant star wrote. “That this beautiful gift will remain. But I try to not ignore the facts, and the facts are that I am healthy, and my baby is healthy, my baby is growing and now kicking and constantly reminding me of their very real presence within me.”
The Emily Owens, M.D. alum has loved performing since she was a child. “My mother would have to pull me aside and tell me that I wasn’t onstage,” King told Vanity Fair in September 2016. “I was a cheerleader, president of choir and in the school play.”
After graduating from the Yale School of Drama — “the best years of” her life — the Birth of a Nation star went on to play Michaela Pratt in six seasons of How to Get Away With Murder.
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“She sets the tone,” she told Interview Magazine in August 2016 of working with Viola Davis on the ABC show. “She’s so professional but relaxed about it. … She makes me feel so safe and so empowered because I see the beauty in what she’s doing. I see the way she treats everyone so well.”
