Anna Faris Reveals She Felt Guilt After Her Son's Premature Birth

Anna Faris has always been considerably open about the grounded aspects of her 2018 divorce from Chris Pratt and subsequent co-parenting journey. On a May 3 episode of her podcast "Anna Faris Is Unqualified," the actor disclosed the emotional hardships following their 2017 separation, revealing, in addition to facing the challenge of co-parenting their son Jack, she felt herself at a loss of close confidants due to overly guarding her ups-and-downs with Pratt. "I think not having that stunted me in a lot of ways," Faris confessed. "I never talked about any issues."

Now engaged to cinematographer Michael Barrett (she was first spotted with a "gigantic diamond ring" in November 2019, per TMZ), Faris told Laura Wasser's "Divorce Sucks!" podcast (via People) about her happiness for Pratt's engagement that year to Katherine Schwarzenegger. "Grudge-holding is not something that Chris and I do," she emphasized to Wasser, sharing a "fantasy idea" that she and Pratt would discuss of "do we all spend Christmas together? Do we all vacation together?"

Undeniably one of the most positive stories in Hollywood of co-parenting alongside Pratt, Faris also shared some previously undisclosed details of her journey following Jack's premature birth.

Anna Faris delivered son Jack seven weeks early, and it invited an endless wheel of questions in her mind, as she said during a virtual panel for nonprofit GAPPS (the Global Alliance to Prevent Prematurity and Stillbirth). Faris, a GAPPS board member, was surprised to feel healthy and energetic amid her first pregnancy (one that her OB-GYN had labeled "geriatric" due to her age). So "when I woke up ... in a small puddle of fluid, I truly didn't have any idea what to do," Faris shared, per People.

Born weighing just 3 lbs., 10 oz., Jack, luckily, turned out healthy, but his first few years were full of necessary medical checkups, surgeries, and physical therapies. Sweetly, Faris added at the event, they were also brimming with "a lot of laughter — because Jack was and is the most adorable cutest thing." The premature nature of his birth, however, saddled Faris with questions. 

"My mind would constantly return to the why. Why did my water break? So of course I tried to look for answers," she explained. Asking her doctor if everything from Jack's nails to her "geriatric" pregnancy to "the cold cuts I ate" could have caused it, Faris finally made peace with one inevitable — and unsatisfying — conclusion. "The truth is... we have no idea why this happens," Faris said, noting the importance of GAPPS's work toward prevention of premature births in finding answers.