Jessica Simpson Recalls Being Hospitalized During Third Pregnancy

Nearly three years after Jessica Simpson welcomed her third child, the details leading up to Birdie Mae Johnson‘s birth are no less scary. 

In a new interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, the fashion mogul recalled being hospitalized ahead of her daughter’s 2019 arrival and even put on a breathing machine as she struggled with bronchitis. 

“Her oxygen levels were dropping. I couldn’t breathe,” Simpson explained. “I was 260 pounds. She was a very big baby. We were like, ‘Just take her out.'” However, that didn’t ultimately become little Birdie’s birthday. Instead, Simpson’s youngest child with husband Eric Johnson arrived via C-section on March 19, 2019. 

By that point, the pop star noted in her 2020 memoir Open Book, she had endured four rounds of bronchitis. “This was kind of the pregnancy from hell,” she wrote. “When I wasn’t being hospitalized for bronchitis…I was breaking a toilet seat leaning back.”

Birdie was “so big,” she wrote, that a C-section was scheduled nearly a month before Simpson’s actual due date. Despite the challenges the star faced, it sounds like having little girl made it all worth it. “I have fallen more in love with my family watching them love our Birdie,” she wrote in her book. “She came at just the right time for us.”