Eva Mendes has that new mom glow!
The actress appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Wednesday, just 11 weeks after welcoming her firstborn daughter, Esmeralda Gosling. Host Ellen DeGeneres began the interview by playing a clip from Mendes' previous appearance on the show—when she denied being pregnant. "Liar, liar," the comedienne told her guest.
So, did Mendes lie to DeGeneres' face?
"Not really, because I was so early on. All mom's will understand, you're not supposed to tell anybody during your first—well, certainly not the world—in your first trimester," she said. "And my mother didn't even know yet. So that would have been an awkward phone call. 'Hey, mom, did you catch Ellen today?' Um, oops!"
Fair enough.
Mendes hasn't shared a photo of her baby with the public. "Do you mind if I show a picture first?" DeGeneres asked.
"The one I sent you?" the actress asked. "No."
"I mean, Ryan Gosling is the dad, so you can imagine how gorgeous this baby is," the TV host said. "Between the two of them..."
Just then, a composite photo of Mendes and Gosling appeared on the screen behind them.
"Isn't she adorable?" Mendes asked. DeGeneres smiled and replied, "She looks like both of you. I mean really! She looks like both of you, doesn't she? It's hard to say who she's more like." The Hitch actress said she couldn't "stop staring" at the composite and joked that the faux baby looked "very exotic."
"You're putting makeup on her already," DeGeneres kidded. "She's really pretty."
DeGeneres and Mendes also looked at composites of other celebrity couples.
On a more serious note, DeGeneres wanted to know if Esmeralda is sleeping through the night.
"No! No! God no! She's two months! You know we're getting the hang of it, the sleeping thing, but yeah, I'm exhausted and it's the best," the Girl in Progress star, 40, admitted. "Really, I'm so incredibly tired. I thought I was tired before at times, but no. Nothing like this! But I wouldn't have it any other way."
During the interview, Mendes also discussed the challenges her daughter will face, given her parents' fame. "Early on, we decided it's going to be very hard for her to have privacy. And we thought this is the first opportunity we can give her to protect her, and so then I had a nice calm pregnancy," she recalled.
"We'll figure it out," she added, "but I'm very thankful that we got through the pregnancy."
Mendes looked slim in a red dress, but she's not worried about getting her post-baby back in shape. "The whole bounce back thing. I'm like, 'Oh, gosh. Ease up. It's OK. We don't have to...' you know?"
"You don't have to bounce back," DeGeneres said in agreement.
"I mean, eventually maybe, but certainly not in a couple weeks," Mendes said.
So, how has Mendes been losing her baby weight? "Breast-feeding. I've always heard it. It really does help to shrink your uterus back to normal size. It does! I know it's a really weird thing to say, but it does," the movie star revealed. "Breast-feeding is really helping, and then obviously you want to be healthy for the baby because she's eating kind of what I'm eating, so you want to make good choices."