14 DAY TRIAL // Gisele Bundchen is one of the highest paid models in the industry and interest in her continues to soar as she does her best to keep her life as normal as possible. This, of course, also translates into little coverage in the media because neither Gisele nor husband Tom Brady likes to talk about their personal life, which only makes the Vogue feature for April 2010 all the more special.
In it, Gisele talks about her pregnancy, how she kept in shape during it, how she and Tom came up with the name for their son (the couple’s first) and how it was like to return to work after the absence. Not surprisingly, the model reveals she hardly gained any weight while pregnant with Benjamin, and it wasn’t because of her good genes or anything. The adept of healthy eating, Gisele did not use her pregnancy as an excuse to gorge; moreover, she kept working out until almost the end.
“I did kung fu up until two weeks before Benjamin was born, and yoga three days a week. I think a lot of people get pregnant and decide they can turn into garbage disposals. I was mindful about what I ate, and I gained only 30 pounds,” the beauty says. As for coming up with the name Benjamin, that was not an easy decision to make, she explains. “I wanted him to be called River because I wanted something always flowing, immortal. My husband said, ‘There’s no way we’re going to call him River.’ But my father’s name is Reinoldo, so it’s a homage to him. And it’s like water,” adds Gisele.
Getting back to work was a bit weird after the wonderful experience of birth and the early days of motherhood. “I got to the studio and I felt like I was E.T. - whoa, what’s going on? Hair and makeup? I hadn’t looked at myself in a mirror for a month and a half. Usually, as I walk through the door into that atmosphere, I already feel different. There’s a button that goes On and I’m On. And when I go On, there is almost no me; there is just a character who is doing all this. This time it wasn’t like that. For the first time, I think I actually saw me – the inside – instead of the persona,” Gisele says.
After many months of speculation, Gisele and Tom Brady tied the knot in a very private ceremony in January last year. Benjamin Rein, the couple’s first child together, was born in December of the same year – now, in April, Gisele Bundchen is already back to work, having lost the (little) baby weight she gained while pregnant.