Many people are in tune with their bodies. But actor Jada Pinkett Smith might be more connected with hers than the average human. She recalls knowing in record time the moment she conceived her son, Jaden Smith.
It’s a funny concept to think about because leading up to the pregnancy, Pinkett Smith wasn’t even certain she ever wanted to become a mother. She strongly rejected traditional life paths such as marriage in favour of building her career instead. Then she met future husband Will Smith on the set of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and everything changed.
Jada Pinkett Smith didn’t expect to fall in love with her co-star.
Pinkett Smith wasn’t looking for a relationship when she auditioned to play Smith’s girlfriend on the show in 1994. She especially didn’t seek to break up a marriage. When the couple met, Smith was married to his first wife, Sheree Zampino. But the attraction between these two co-stars was undeniable.
“We did not have an affair while he was married; let’s be clear about that,” Pinkett-Smith said during an episode of Red Table Talk. However, they couldn’t stop thinking about each other. This eventually led to the breakdown of Smith’s first marriage. After his divorce, he allegedly called Pinkett Smith and said, “Are you seeing anybody?”
When she replied no, he responded with, “Cool. You’re seeing me now.”
She knew she got pregnant right away.
Biologically speaking, conception may take up to six days, depending on how long it takes for the sperm and egg to meet up inside the body. But Pinkett Smith felt an instant confirmation that one of her encounters with Smith would involve a baby at the end.
In a joint conversation on Red Table Talk, Smith said, “It was literally four seconds after we had sex and she was like, ‘Gasp.’ And I was like, ‘Babe, you OK?’”
He continued: “And she was like, ‘I’m pregnant.’ And I was like, ‘Babe. I think scientifically you’re not pregnant,’” MSN reported.
Jada Pinkett Smith struggled with ‘resentment’ over becoming a mother.
The Matrix Reloaded star didn’t have an easy path to her reluctant new role as a mom, especially considering how difficult the first trimester of pregnancy was for her. Plus, her mother pressured her into marriage, which Pinkett Smith insists she never wanted.
“My first trimester was horrible. And I was so upset that I had to have a wedding. I was so p*ssed and kept crying down the freaking aisle. Cried the whole way down the aisle,” she recalled.
“I just never really agreed with the construct. I still don’t. Till death do us part is real for me, but all of the rules and all of the ideas. This title, ‘wife,’ the accepted conventional definition of wife in the paradigm — I’m not that.”
She realized life turned out how it was supposed to
And she felt unfavourably toward her new responsibilities, too. “Yeah – I had a lot of resentment … I had a lot of resentment, you know? And I used to have to work through regret, which I don’t have anymore.”
These days Pinkett Smith has very close relationships with both her children, Jaden and Willow. She eventually embraced her new reality. “What I had to realize was like, my life has happened exactly as it’s supposed to,” she said. “I got to a point in my life when it didn’t make sense to think about what I could have done.”
Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith encouraged their kids to make mistakes.
Having two celebrities as parents probably weren’t easy. However, Will and Jada didn’t overcompensate for their children’s financial privileges by enforcing strict rules. Instead, they allowed Jaden and Willow to do whatever they wanted and figure out consequences by themselves.
“We don’t do punishment,” Will told E! News. “The way that we deal with our kids is, they are responsible for their lives. Our concept is, as young as possible, give them as much control over their lives as possible and the concept of punishment, our experience has been — it has a little too much of a negative quality.”
He continued: “So when they do things — and you know, Jaden, he’s done things — you can do anything you want as long as you can explain to me why that was the right thing to do for your life.”
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