Before She Died, Hayden Panettiere Got Candid About Her Toughest Days as a Mom

The "Heroes" alum welcomed Kaya in 2014 with former fiancé Wladimir Klitschko. In the months leading up to her passing, she had spoken openly about the darkest period of her life as a new mother.

Hayden Panettiere passed away unexpectedly on August 16, 2026, at age 36. Among those she left behind was her daughter and only child, Kaya Evdokia Klitschko, whom she shared with former fiancé Wladimir Klitschko.

Hayden Panettiere and former professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko arrive at the 2011 InStyle/Warner Brothers Golden Globes Party at The Beverly Hilton hotel on January 15 in Beverly Hills, California. | Source: Getty Images

The actress welcomed Kaya, now 11, with the retired professional boxer, 50, in 2014. Following her daughter's birth, Panettiere revealed she spiraled into postpartum depression, a diagnosis she spoke about openly in the years that followed.

She explored that difficult chapter in depth in her May 2026 memoir, "This Is Me: A Reckoning." While promoting the book, she looked back on how the struggle first took hold during a cover interview with Us Weekly that same month.

Hayden Panettiere arrives to the 66th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards held at the Nokia Theater on August 25, 2014. | Source: Getty Images

"I had it like all planned out in my head, and as the plans just collapsed, the postpartum came, and I was completely out of control, and suddenly I was this … I was nowhere near the mom that I had sworn to myself that one day I was going to be and that was devastating," she said.

She continued, "That was devastating. [It] was heartbreaking. I'm such a perfectionist in so many ways that being at least a good mother was just so, so important to me. And such a crushing blow when I was incapable of being, an even semi-decent mom, in my mind."

Hayden Panettiere of Walt Disney Television's "Nashville" is a guest on "Good Morning America," on April 20, 2015. | Source: Getty Images

The former couple split in August 2018, and Panettiere made the difficult call to relinquish full custody of their daughter while she battled severe postpartum depression alongside an addiction to alcohol and opioids.

Consequently, Kaya moved to Ukraine to live with Klitschko. "It was a nightmare," Panettiere recalled of the day Klitschko presented her with the documents to sign over full custody of their daughter.

"It was a living nightmare, and I felt so out of control. There's nothing that I could do about it," she said. Panettiere never specified exactly when she gave up custody, and she admitted she still wasn't sure she had fully come to terms with it.

"I feel like I would be lying if I said that I have, even to this day, been able to fully process them, those emotions in a healthy way," she said. "I had to figure out, there was no other option to me, but to figure out how to stand back."

Still, she recognized it was ultimately the right choice for her child.

"There's so much of me that wanted to fight, but I had to ultimately take into consideration the most important thing, which was how this was all going to affect my daughter," the actress said. "Sometimes that means having to do the hardest things in the world, for their sake."

Hayden Panettiere is seen on May 19, 2026 in New York City. | Source: Getty Images

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In time, she and Klitschko built a strong co-parenting bond, and Panettiere grew closer to Kaya as a result. "I can't even put into words. She's just an incredible gift," Panettiere said of her daughter.

She added, "She is just such an incredible human being. She's otherworldly and so sweet and so kind and so fierce and such a lover and surrounded by good people and good friends, and it's incredible for me to be able to watch her thrive in areas that I struggled with growing up."