Katherine Heigl had a tough time bonding with her oldest daughter, Naleigh, due to her hectic work schedule for “Grey’s Anatomy.”
The actress recalled on “The View” Monday that just three days after she and her husband, Josh Kelley, adopted the then-9-month-old from South Korea in 2009, she had to get on a plane to film the ABC medical drama in Atlanta.
“I never saw that baby,” she said. “I was at work with three triplets who were playing my goddaughter, and I spent more time with them than I did with my new daughter.”
Heigl, 44, shared that Naleigh, now 14, “bonded” with Kelley, 42, but did not get as much personal time with her at first.
“I was always afraid that I had missed that opportunity to really bond with her and that she didn’t love me — in that moment,” she admitted.
The Emmy winner explained that she initially thought she could juggle being a present mom and having a flourishing career.
“At the time, becoming a new mother, I was just like, ‘I got it. I got it. I can handle this,’” she remembered. “You know, they’ve told us we can have it all. We can have careers and have families and it’s all gonna be great. It’s all gonna work out.”
Despite the initial difficulties of being a first-time mother, Heigl wanted to further expand her family, telling Gala magazine in 2010 that she and Kelley “would love to have a second child, adopted or biological.”
“We’re not ruling it out,” she added at the time.
The couple, who married in 2007, went on to adopt another daughter, Adalaide, now 10, in 2012. The “27 Dresses” star then gave birth to a son, Joshua Jr., now 5, in 2017.
