First of all, we absolutely need to normalize Stegosaurus Chic. More back horns!! Ciara and her back horns cover the latest issue of Self. Ciara gave birth to her third child last year, a son named Win Harrison Wilson. Her oldest son, Future Wilburn, is the product of her disastrous relationship with Future. Future Jr. is pretty much being solely raised by Ciara and Russell Wilson, who treats the boy as his own. Ciara worked hard to bounce back after her first two pregnancies, but after her third… it definitely feels like she’s taking it easy on herself, and she’s not setting goals like “all of the baby weight has to be off in six months” or whatever nonsense. Ciara chatted with Self about all of that and more. Some highlights:

Parenting in a pandemic: “I don’t even know if you can call it organized chaos, but it is to some degree. Sometimes not even the most organized, to be honest. But I’m enjoying it all. I found my way to embrace it all. I just decided, Hey, this is a unique time. It is a challenging time. And the world is changing. But rather than letting the world change me, I’m going to figure out how to change with it. That’s been my mentality. How do I adjust? How do I really work and find the silver lining in the midst of it all?”

Affirmations: “I’ve always been a planner, always, since day one, even back to the start of my career with having a goal sheet. You can’t get to where you want to get to in life without a compass. I really believe that in order to get to where you want to get to in life, you got to envision it, you got to speak it, you got to plan it, and you got to write it down. I believe in those affirmations.”

Their kids are doing full remote learning: “With Russ and football, they have to take COVID tests every day—there’s so many people on a football team. Our babies have intermittent asthma, so we have to be super cautious. We don’t know how this virus performs. There’s so many reasons why we have to take super-high measures to make sure we’re being as safe as we can be considering everything.”

Doctor’s appointments in a pandemic: “That was just such, wow, an out-of-body experience. [Russell] drove me all the way down to my doctor’s office, an hour drive to my doctor’s office, to sit in the car and FaceTime with me to see the screen.”

Russell & the doctor were the only people in the delivery room: “Russ was literally everything in one. He was my husband. He was the photographer, the videographer. He was so cute because he set up the cameras. He was looking at the camera, checking the angle, and [saying], ‘The baby is going to come out this way, so I’ll be right here, and this camera will be right here.’ And then he also got to help pull the baby out, which was really sweet.”

She gave birth with a mask on: “My obstetrician, who’s delivered all my babies, was not playing any games about this COVID. I literally made my first push with Win and then he was like, ‘She needs a mask on. Get a mask on.’ It happened so fast, so I still had my mask [down]. But he was like, ‘Oh, no, no. She gon’ put that mask on.’ My mask was pretty good. I could still breathe alright through it, so that was good. But it was like, ‘Wow. This is crazy. I’m having to deliver a baby with a mask. What in the world?’ It was literally three pushes, good ones. Three good pushes and he was here.”

She & Russell still do date nights: “We do have to put ourselves first as husband and wife, and that’s a hard thing to really understand, I think, especially for women, moms. We love our babies so much. But we got to make sure our love is feeling good too, our husbands are feeling good too.”

[From Self]

The part about Russell being all things in the delivery room, including photographer, videographer, “catching” the baby and all that… come on. Stop it. I honestly don’t know how women can handle it when a guy trains a camera on crowning baby head. I just feel like… fathers should be on the other end, holding their baby mama’s hand and helping her do her breathing exercises. Then again, Ciara delivered her baby in 20 minutes – !!!! – so I guess there wasn’t time for all of the set-ups Russell wanted to do.

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Cover & IG courtesy of Self.