Hollywood actress Hayden Panettiere, who died at 36 on August 16, is survived by her 11-year-old daughter, Kaya Evdokia Klitschko. Her former fiancé, Wladimir Klitschko, has full custody of their daughter.
Panettiere has been very vocal about her complicated journey that shaped her relationship with her only child — from traumatic , postpartum depression, struggles with , and more.
In her May 2026 memoir, ‘This Is Me: A Reckoning’, the Nashville actress said that her bond with Kaya remained “incredibly strong.” She also spoke about it on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast later in the month.
“Not being under the same roof with her every day has been the most gut-wrenching experience of my life, and it’s hard to describe the layers of emotion—including sadness, resentment, and anger—I’ve felt because of it,” she wrote in her memoir.
“I grieve that I’m not the mother I thought I’d be and definitely not the mother I want to be (trust me, no one should ever have to raise a child on FaceTime), and although I miss Kaya so much my heart aches, I know how blessed I am to be her mom,” she said. “She is the greatest gift of my life, with all the best parts of her father and me.”
‘She didn’t ask to be born into the limelight’
“She didn’t ask to be born into the limelight or my chaos, and she didn’t get to choose her parents,” Panettiere wrote, explaining why she intentionally kept much of her daughter’s life out of her memoir
“I want her to have every choice that I didn’t, including the ability to live a private life.”
Out of respect for Kaya’s “right to normalcy,” the actress said she would tell stories about motherhood only from her own perspective and keep personal details about her daughter “to a minimum.”
She also took responsibility for what she called her “shortcomings as a mom” and praised Klitschko, writing that he was “one of the most courageous people I’ve ever met and a true hero in so many ways.”
“Wlad, you are a wonderful human being and an amazing father to Kaya,” she wrote.
Traumatic childbirth
Kaya was born in December 2014 after a frightening and delivery in Hawaii.
Panettiere revealed in her memoir that it was “far more difficult” than what the public knew at the time, adding that the Nashville writers incorporated her pregnancy into the storyline of her character, Juliette Barnes.
“Juliette’s difficult, unexpected pregnancy was clearly the product of Nashville’s writers rejiggering my personal life and making it a plot device,” she wrote.
She recalled that her baby’s arms and legs did not appear to be growing as quickly as the rest of her body, and was referred to a radiologist.
The actress said that she later learned that her daughter’s limbs were fine, but doctors were instead concerned about the size of her head. She was told that her daughter had microcephaly and could potentially be cognitively impaired.
Panettiere described childbirth as the “hardest thing” she had ever done in her memoir and said she had to undergo a three-hour surgery after her blood would not clot during her C-section. She later learned her uterus had become infected.
‘I felt nothing’
Hayden Panettiere wrote that she struggled to bond with Kaya after giving birth. She recalled the emotional numbness she experienced following her birth, and said, “I’d always heard that mothers feel an instant rush of love the moment they lay their eyes on their baby, but I felt nothing.”
The actress said bonding with her newborn felt like an “insurmountable task,” and she soon felt that she was “raising Kaya alone.”
With her “natural optimism and pep” disappearing, Panettiere struggled to soothe her daughter. At one point, she said, she was worried she had accidentally hurt Kaya while taking her out of the bath.
“But it wasn’t panic that was sitting in my chest,” she wrote. “It was nothing. A total blackout of emotion, like my soul was dead. I wasn’t myself, yet the problem was I didn’t know what I was supposed to be.”
Struggle with alcohol
Panettiere recalled overly depending on alcohol to cope; so much so that she would pour so much that her glass “almost overflowed.” Her drinking escalated after she returned to work in Nashville.
Relieved that Klitschko wasn’t around the many empty bottles, she said she eventually found herself needing alcohol just to get out of bed and go to work.
“It’s 6 a.m.,” she remembered thinking, “and I’m trying to get drunk.”
Postpartum depression
Panettiere was diagnosed with postpartum depression when Kaya was 4 months old and was prescribed medication to help her cope. However, the star wrote that it created another problem — It kept her from “cracking,” “but they had a catch: if I didn’t take them, I couldn’t sleep. If I did, I slept too much.”
“I walked into rehab addicted to one substance, and I walked out, completely dependent on something else,” she wrote.
In 2024, she told E! News that she wished she had understood postpartum depression before experiencing it herself.
“I never heard any stories about it at all. I just thought there was something seriously wrong with me, so I thought, ‘[Alcohol] will fix this. Duh!’ ” she said. “And it didn’t. It does for a moment, but then it made everything worse.”
Signing over custody
Panettiere shared that her struggle eventually took a toll on both her career and relationship with Klitschko, while Kaya began going back and forth between her parents.
Klitschko ultimately presented her with custody papers seeking full custody of Kaya because he was worried about Kaya while she was in her mother’s care, she wrote.
Panettiere wrote that she initially defended herself, saying Kaya had “amazing nannies and is surrounded by people who love her,” but ultimately decided not to fight Klitschko for custody.
“I remember every second of that day. Every f—ing second,” she wrote. “No mother could forget a single thing about the day she signed her child away.”
Panettiere said she had the financial means to wage a custody battle but believed doing so while she was still in recovery would have destroyed her.
