This article was originally published on Crafting Your Home. A human contributor also wrote and edited the post.
The post Nara Smith Gets Real About the Pressure to Be a ‘Perfect’ Postpartum Mom… And the One Thing She Can’t Make From Scratch first appeared on Crafting Your Home
Nara Smith has built an entire online empire around the idea that she can make anything from scratch, whether it’s homemade bubble gum, hot dogs, or even Flaming Hot Cheetos, all while dressed in couture that looks more suited to a runway than a kitchen.
But in a new exclusive interview, the mom of four opens up about the one thing she’s never attempted to whip up herself: baby formula, using that admission as a jumping-off point to talk candidly about the messier, far less curated realities of postpartum life.
The 24-year-old content creator and model, who has become closely associated with the “tradwife” aesthetic thanks to her elaborate from-scratch cooking videos, explained that formula sits in a different category entirely from the meals she typically re-creates for her millions of followers.
She told the outlet that formula involves an extensive, carefully regulated development process that makes it unsafe to attempt at home, a distinction she felt was important to draw given how closely her brand has become tied to doing nearly everything herself, down to the last ingredient.
The One Thing Nara Smith Can’t Make From Scratch
Smith explained that formula is simply too high-stakes for a homemade approach, telling the outlet, “There’s so much that goes into it to where it’s just not safe to make it from scratch,” before adding that the rigorous testing behind commercial formula exists specifically because babies depend entirely on getting it right.
The comment marks a notable moment of vulnerability for a creator whose entire public identity has been built around the idea that nearly anything can be made better, healthier, or more meaningful when it’s prepared with her own two hands.
That admission ties directly into a new feeding-focused campaign Smith is fronting, one she said was designed specifically to push back against the idea that there is only one correct way to feed a baby.
Despite frequently being lumped in with the broader tradwife movement, a conservative lifestyle trend that often frames breastfeeding as the most “natural” approach to infant feeding, Smith made clear she does not share that rigid view.
“I want women to feel empowered to make decisions that are best for their mental health and their physical health, but also for their family and their well-being overall,” she said, framing the campaign as a direct response to the guilt many new mothers feel over their feeding choices.
Smith went on to describe her own winding path with breastfeeding, pumping, and eventually formula across her four pregnancies, noting that the experience looked different every single time.
She described loving the bonding that came with breastfeeding but said she ultimately felt just as connected to her baby once she transitioned to formula, pushing back on the idea that one method is inherently more meaningful than the other.
Reflecting on why she felt compelled to speak publicly about something so personal, Smith explained that the longer she has been a mother, the more she has come to understand just how differently the experience unfolds for every woman, regardless of how picture-perfect any one version might look from the outside.
Behind the Perfect Feed: Nara Opens Up About Postpartum Anxiety
Beyond the specifics of feeding, Smith used the conversation to address something she said gets far less attention than it deserves: the weight of postpartum anxiety, as opposed to the more commonly discussed postpartum depression.
She described a persistent, nagging pressure to be productive after giving birth, paired with a constant undercurrent of fear about whether she was doing right by her children, even as her public image continued to project effortless calm and control.
It’s a distinction Smith felt was worth naming publicly precisely because so much of the cultural conversation around new motherhood still centers on depression alone, often leaving anxiety as an afterthought.
Smith also revealed just how far the gap can stretch between what she showed publicly and what she was actually experiencing behind closed doors.
In one particularly candid moment, she described putting on a composed front for her midwife during checkups, then turning to her husband afterward and admitting, “I’m not OK.”
She also opened up about why she held back from being fully honest with her medical team in the first place, explaining, “I didn’t tell my midwife because sometimes I have a hard time conveying hard emotions,” and adding that she has long felt an instinct to be perceived as collected and strong rather than visibly struggling.
According to Smith, that gap between the image and the reality only widened with each subsequent birth, even as she gained more experience and, in theory, more confidence navigating the postpartum period.
Smith was candid about the practical toll of her most recent postpartum stretch as well, describing stretches of surviving on as little as three hours of sleep a night in the earliest weeks following her fourth child’s birth.
She noted that her rest has since improved slightly to around four hours a night, a modest but meaningful shift that she said has helped, even as the broader exhaustion of caring for a newborn alongside three other young children remains a constant undercurrent to her day-to-day life.
Taken together, her comments paint a picture considerably messier and more exhausting than the glossy, effortlessly composed videos that built her audience in the first place.
A Family That Keeps Growing, and a Persona She’s Pushing Back On
Smith and her husband, model Lucky Blue Smith, welcomed their fourth child, a daughter named Fawnie Golden Smith, on September 27, 2025, a birth date that happened to fall on Nara’s own birthday.
Fawnie joins older siblings Rumble Honey, Slim Easy, and Whimsy Lou, along with Gravity Blue, Lucky’s daughter from a previous relationship, whom Nara has helped raise as a stepmother.
The couple, who met through Instagram direct messages and married in February 2020, have built much of their public brand around documenting their growing family alongside Nara’s elaborate, from-scratch approach to feeding and homemaking.
That domestic, deeply curated aesthetic has made Smith one of the internet’s most recognizable faces of the modern tradwife movement, even as she has repeatedly pushed back against being defined solely by that label.
Her latest comments continue a broader pattern of Smith gradually pulling back the curtain on her own life, offering glimpses of exhaustion, uncertainty, and imperfection that stand in sharp contrast to the meticulously composed videos that made her famous.
Whether discussing her own struggles with postpartum anxiety or acknowledging the limits of what she is willing or able to make herself, Smith appears increasingly intent on reminding her audience that even a life that looks flawless online still comes with the same messy, unpredictable realities every new parent faces behind closed doors.
For a creator so closely tied to the idea of doing it all from scratch, admitting there are things she can’t or won’t attempt to make herself marks a meaningful shift in how Smith chooses to present her motherhood journey going forward.
Rather than papering over the harder parts of postpartum life, she appears to be leaning into a more complete, if occasionally uncomfortable, version of the story, one that acknowledges sleepless nights, unspoken anxiety, and the very real pressure to appear like she has it all figured out, even when she doesn’t.
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