Brooke Shields teaches daughters about inner beauty

I'm starting them young to try to instill in them the sense that there's something more to life than what's on the outside.

Being a mom has brought the 43-year-old actress "an intensity of love" she says she's never felt before, something that is reaffirmed for her each and every day. 

When Rowan comes into my bedroom in the mornings it's like I'm in heaven.  She does this thing where she opens my eyelids with her little hands and says 'Mummy, wake up now!'

Click continue reading for Brooke's thoughts on her well-publicized battle with postpartum depression.

Becoming a successful actress while still a teenager, Brooke had become accustomed to a lifetime of success.  When she struggled to conceive a baby with husband Chris Henchy, however, she was forced to accept that not all things would come to her naturally. 

My mother brought me up to believe I could do anything I wanted to. I thought I'd get pregnant in a nanosecond.

After six attempts at in vitro fertilization Brooke became pregnant with Rowan, a time in her life that Brooke says was "happy, happy, happy like you would not believe."  It stands in stark contrast to what she experienced after Rowan's birth, however, when she found herself battling postpartum depression.

I just wanted to die.  If I saw a large truck, my impulse was to jump in front of it. 

Much of what she felt during that time -- which she chronicled in the bestselling book Down Came The Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression -- was "so absurd," Brooke says she "can only laugh about it now."

The scary thing was how rational I felt. It wasn't dramatic. It was very matter-of-fact and made perfect sense.  That was what was so devastating, it was as if I'd been bodysnatched.

Source: Daily Mail; Photo by Flynet.