Sarah Jessica Parker says the moment she met her 10-month-old twin daughters, Loretta and Tabitha – who were delivered via surrogate – time stood still.
"I tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to get pregnant, but it just was not to be, the conventional way – I would give birth as often as I could, if I could. I cherished all the milestones, the good and the bad," the 45-year-old actress said in Vogue's May issue.
"Meeting your children rather than giving birth to them, it's as if, um, it's suspended animation. The gestational experience is gone. It's as if everything else disappears for a moment, and the world goes silent and, I can't explain it except to say that nothing else existed," she continued, looking back on the moment when she and husband Matthew Broderick met their new daughters. "I don't remember anything but the blanket on the bed that they were lying on and my husband's face and their faces and my son's. It's literally as if sound is sucked from the room. Time stands still. It's so different, and equally extraordinary. I am very poor at describing it. But it's amazing."
The actress said the surrogate experience was dramatically different than being pregnant with her son James Wilke.
"I think the biggest thing is you can't celebrate something that is potentially filled with joy, nor can you share fears and worries about every checkup, you know — the 16-week checkup, the amnio, the this, the that. The bone scan, the nuchal test. And the waiting is different, the whole nine months," she told the mag. "We couldn't talk about the fact that we were having children to anybody for so long. All the stuff that matters is secretive and worrisome. You can't talk about how you feel about the woman who's carrying your children; you can only talk about it to your husband."
Now that the new additions to the family have arrived, Sarah Jessica said she and Matthew are very hands-on parents.
"I make my children's food myself. We put together their high chairs ourselves; we do a lot ourselves!" she told the mag. "We do our own grocery shopping, we go to the market ourselves, you know? I do my laundry."
As for her other baby – "Sex and The City" — the actress said that fans will see a different side of Carrie Bradshaw in the upcoming sequel – a less revealing one.
"[Costume designer Patricia Field] wanted all the characters to be interesting, sexy, all the stories that Pat likes to tell with clothing, but we had religious and environmental and cultural standards to respect," she said, explaining about shooting part of the sequel in the Middle East. "You have to look at clothing and women and women's bodies completely differently. And you start to see how you can still see so much with someone covered. And how exciting that is and how beautiful it is and how draping can be incredibly sexy…I don't think Carrie's worn a long dress in years; she doesn't really do that. Unless it's whimsy. Or over-the-top couture."
She also noted that making the sequel with co-stars Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon was an amazing bonding experience while abroad.
"What I'm most happy to tell you is that we four women, despite I guess what a lot of people hope, have never been better," she said. "This movie — and maybe it's because we actually lived together — it was the best! We were together all day long, at night, in the restaurants, in our hotels. It was wonderful."
"Sex and The City 2" hits theaters on May 27.
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