<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  Is it my imagination, or does Katherine Heigl seem nervous as she sits down for this interview after her REDBOOK cover shoot? The actress, 31, who established herself in Grey&amp;#039;s Anatomy, then tipped over into major stardom with the blockbuster Knocked Up, is clearly no newcomer to interviews \u2014 but then, more than her fair share have come back to haunt her. As beautiful in person as she is on camera, she also, apparently, is as complicated as the characters she plays, prone to overthinking out loud or just plain blurting (she famously said Knocked Up was &amp;quot;a little sexist&amp;quot;). So maybe she has reason to seem a bit reserved the day I meet her in Pittsburgh, where she&amp;#039;s shooting her next movie (she plays a bondswoman in One for the Money). When we first sit down, she nurses a Manhattan and grips the electronic cigarette she&amp;#039;s using to quit smoking, its light, at the tip, glittering like a jewel. And yet in just minutes, Katherine gives way to Katie, as her friends call her, a warm, confiding, unabashedly neurotic soul. The trick, it turns out, is easy: Just ask about her daughter. Last September she and her husband, singer Joshua Kelley, adopted a baby girl, Naleigh (now almost 2), from South Korea. Like many moms, Katherine talks about her child, about the demands of parenting, about its unexpected bursts of joy, as if she has a need to unpack it all, to savor it by sharing it. &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s so delicious \u2014 you can literally chew on her legs,&amp;quot; she tells me in a typical moment of stream-of-consciousness reverie. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re just ham hocks!&amp;quot; For a while, it seemed that Katherine was caught in a spiral of bad press, and then worse press as she tried to explain what she really meant \u2014 a public examining she says she took extremely hard. But she&amp;#039;s come out on the other side now, wiser for the experience. &amp;quot;I try not to spend too much time thinking about these things anymore,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a disservice to how great my life is; life is too good, life is too sweet. I just want to appreciate it.&amp;quot; She also has bigger fish to fry: Her new movie, Life As We Know It, features one of her most confident, winning performances to date. (It&amp;#039;s about a woman who loses two friends in a tragic car accident, then takes on the job of raising their baby with co-guardian Josh Duhamel.) And Katherine&amp;#039;s personal life continues to bloom. She and her husband have a new home in Utah, where the family regularly escapes the Hollywood madness, and Katherine started a philanthropic organization with her mom, the Jason Debus Heigl Foundation (named after her late brother), which raises funds to rescue and spay or neuter pets so that fewer unwanted animals are killed. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve grown up a little bit,&amp;quot; Katherine says. Then her eyes light up as someone passes her a tray. &amp;quot;Chocolates! Hooray!&amp;quot; she cheers. The best part of gaining maturity: When life is good, you know it. No one ever feels totally ready for a baby, but did you feel more or less prepared by the time Naleigh arrived? Actually, she came to us two months early. The adoption agency told us she would probably come after Christmas and not to get our hopes up because with international adoptions the babies never come early. And so I had taken a movie project with a schedule that would allow me to be done in early November. Then we got a call and they said the baby was coming in two weeks. We were like: two weeks? I considered trying to pull out of the film, but they couldn&amp;#039;t replace me. She came two days before we got on a plane to Atlanta to start shooting. So she came to you? Did you consider going to Korea to get her? Because I get followed by the paparazzi, we were trying to figure out how to do it without fanfare \u2014 we thought maybe we could go through Hawaii to avoid them, or fly privately, which is crazy. But we really wanted to get her here without all that chaos: It was about protecting her. In the end, we met her at the airport, and I had to stay in a van so no one would see me. A social worker named Mr. Lee, from the adoption agency, came out to the van with Naleigh, and then we drove to a parking spot and he told us about the flight and what formula she&amp;#039;s drinking and all that kind of stuff....But I don&amp;#039;t remember much of the conversation because she was this little peanut \u2014 she just lay on my shoulder and had these big wide eyes. She had spent all this time on a plane, and they had just taken her away from her foster family, whom she loved and who loved her. So it was intense. She was really quiet, just watching everybody and everything, and I was kind of the same: I was kind of scared too. It was like, There&amp;#039;s no turning back now. This is my child. Oh, my God, I hope I do this right. And did you feel connected right away? I felt relief. I was just so relieved. It&amp;#039;s a lengthy process; it was months and months just dreaming about this kid and thinking, What is she going to be like? So when she was finally in my arms, I was so relieved that it was beginning and that I didn&amp;#039;t just have to look at this one sad little picture on my phone over and over. Now I got to hold her and smell her and know her. How did you and Josh decide that you wanted to adopt? We still talk about having biological children as well \u2014 I&amp;#039;m not ruling anything out. But my feeling about adoption is, Why not? There&amp;#039;s nothing about it that makes it any less meaningful of a relationship in my mind. My husband and I wanted to have a baby, and to us it didn&amp;#039;t matter how it happened. Adoption has been a part of my life and a part of my family, so it was how I wanted to start. It felt natural and right to me. I don&amp;#039;t think it&amp;#039;s for everybody, and I don&amp;#039;t think everybody should adopt \u2014 I&amp;#039;m not some crazy idealist. It&amp;#039;s not about the cause for me. But I do think no one should ever rule it out. And did Josh feel the same way?  He was amazing, actually, because adoption is not a part of his experience, but he was super open to it. There was no hesitation or reticence from him, which was really important to me. You don&amp;#039;t want to be talking someone into loving a child that they&amp;#039;re not sure they can love because it doesn&amp;#039;t have their DNA. But right away, he was like, Yeah, why not, that sounds great. That was proof to me that he is a great guy. Your sister, Meg, was adopted from Korea as well. Was she very moved by your decision? Did you have long talks about it ahead of time? We&amp;#039;re not a very expressive family in that way. She doesn&amp;#039;t get all mushy about it, but the card she wrote to Naleigh when she arrived makes me want to cry every time I think about it. It was just the most beautiful card about being part of the family [chokes up] and she just said, you know, we&amp;#039;re very lucky to have you. It&amp;#039;s great that Naleigh has an example of her own cultural heritage, but also this wonderful person who&amp;#039;s her aunt and her godmother. It&amp;#039;s so weird that you were making a film [Life As We Know It] about a couple getting custody of a baby at the same time you were living it.  It was mind-blowing. At first we started out in a hotel, because I didn&amp;#039;t realize that with a baby you need a dishwasher for bottles and a kitchen with a sink. [Laughs] So then we rented a house. On set, I&amp;#039;d be looking at a high chair like, Oh, how does this chair work? Mine works differently.  The film is so honest about the difficulties that working parents face. Have you found that balance challenging?  Yes. I talk myself into working every day. Because I still feel guilty when I leave her. Sometimes she cries when I go and that&amp;#039;s really bad. And it&amp;#039;s even worse when she&amp;#039;s like, &amp;quot;Bye!&amp;quot; [Mimes a friendly wave and a big smile] Because she&amp;#039;s used to it \u2014 and that&amp;#039;s horrible. But there&amp;#039;s a part of me that believes I wouldn&amp;#039;t be a better mother if I stayed home with her. I think I&amp;#039;d probably be a less patient person, because I love what I do. I just had no idea how hard making that choice every day would be. I also think I&amp;#039;m setting an example for her, showing her that it&amp;#039;s okay to be a working mom and have a career you&amp;#039;re passionate about. And I&amp;#039;m very fortunate that I can work for two or three months, and then if I want to take six months off, I can. What has been your most stressful moment as a mom, so far? Most of Life As We Know It is a complete blur. I had just become a mom. I still don&amp;#039;t necessarily always know what I am doing, and I certainly didn&amp;#039;t then. Naleigh would come to my trailer every day, so I would go there as often as I could [between shots], but that&amp;#039;s such unpredictable timing. I&amp;#039;d have two minutes with her, and then they&amp;#039;d say, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re ready, so you need to come back.&amp;quot; Or sometimes I&amp;#039;d run back and I&amp;#039;d have an hour \u2014 but she&amp;#039;d be napping the whole time. So I was all over the place. I was really trying too hard. I was completely bonkers. After we finished shooting, I had six months off, which was a massive blessing. I got to just be with my kid and be calm. Isn&amp;#039;t it so weird the day you wake up and you&amp;#039;re just going with the flow? And you just suddenly are a mom. And it&amp;#039;s not this analytical experience; it&amp;#039;s intuitive, figuring it out as you go along. Doing this most recent shoot \u2014 One for the Money \u2014 I had to smack myself upside the head and say, You cannot do both perfectly. You&amp;#039;re going to have to let go of the fact that you&amp;#039;re home for two hours but you&amp;#039;re tired and you can&amp;#039;t spend time playing with Naleigh; you have to take a nap. She will survive and it will be okay. If I spread myself too thin, I&amp;#039;m not a good actor, I&amp;#039;m not a good mother, and I&amp;#039;m just really high-strung \u2014 and everybody hates me. Really? Hates? You can ask my husband about it. Poor Josh. [Laughs] How do you two divide up the labor?  He&amp;#039;s pretty amazing. Sometimes he&amp;#039;s gone all week touring, so on the weekends he likes to be with Naleigh on his own. He&amp;#039;s exceptionally good at it. He&amp;#039;s a great dad. I&amp;#039;m not horribly shocked, but I&amp;#039;m a little bit shocked. I didn&amp;#039;t expect it: He&amp;#039;s such a guy. He knows this \u2014 I&amp;#039;m not saying anything he doesn&amp;#039;t know. I adore him, I can&amp;#039;t imagine being with another man, but he can be very self-absorbed. Not in an egomaniacal way, just kind of in his own head and unfocused on anything other than his stuff. So I was really surprised by how on top of it and how connected he is. I don&amp;#039;t worry about a thing. I&amp;#039;m not like, &amp;quot;Did you get the sippy cup? Did you get the diapers? Did you get the Cheerios?&amp;quot; I can&amp;#039;t imagine not having a total equal partner in this. It&amp;#039;s a lot to take on, especially when both parents are working, and you want to be absolutely on the same page in terms of how you&amp;#039;re raising this child. It sounds like it took some time for you to adjust to motherhood. My mother is a realist, and she&amp;#039;s had biological and adoptive children, and she said it&amp;#039;s no different: No matter what, they&amp;#039;re putting a stranger into your arms. You don&amp;#039;t know them yet. And she said don&amp;#039;t be surprised if it takes a while to connect to her in that motherly way \u2014 don&amp;#039;t feel bad, and don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;s something wrong with you or your relationship with this child. My first instinct with Naleigh was a protective one. I just wanted to shelter her and keep her fed and loved and all those things...but the moment I realized I adored her and that she was more special to me than anything in the world \u2014 all clich\u00E9s, but I don&amp;#039;t know how else to say it \u2014 those feelings came a few months later. That was when I thought, Oh, my God, does everyone think she&amp;#039;s this great? Or do only I think she&amp;#039;s this great? And do I think that because she&amp;#039;s my kid or because she really is that great?  I remember after we spent those months together in Utah, if I had to leave her, I would start to feel this desperate need to be around her, see her, hold her, and this desperate desire to go get her out of her crib at night if I hadn&amp;#039;t gotten to be with her all day. This is what that is. This is that feeling. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/interviews/a6725/katherine-heigl-baby/>