Shawn Johnson and Andrew East Recall Difficult Postpartum Period

Shawn Johnson and Andrew East opened up about a particularly trying time postpartum that left both of them in tears.

The married athletes answered “inappropriate questions” in a recently resurfaced clip from an older installment of their podcast Couple Things with Shawn & Andrew. In the original episode — which was released on April 17, 2024 — Johnson, 33, recalled the last time she and East, 33, “both cried at the same time.”

“This is being vulnerable. I apologize for this. We can edit this out later if it’s too vulnerable,” the Olympic gold medalist began. She specified that their previous shared emotional moment happened while they “were having a really hard time postpartum, trying to understand each other, trying to figure out why we weren’t connecting well.”

According to Johnson, the couple — who are parents to daughter Drew, 5, and sons Jett, 4, and Barrett, 1 — were arguing from a place of “desperation.” Their feelings heightened after she mentioned East’s late dad, who died suddenly in December 2022, shortly after his 67th birthday.

“I remember we were both crying because I said, ‘I wish we could just call your dad,'” Johnson continued during the podcast.

Though the pair can tie their most intense moments to the grief of the death of East’s father, they also made sure to pay tribute to his legacy as parents themselves. Their youngest child shares a middle name with East’s father, as they shared in a 2023 update on their FamilyMade newsletter following Barrett’s arrival.

“We knew if we had a boy we wanted to pay tribute to Andrew’s dad who passed away last year and his name was Guy Madison East. Andrew’s Grandpa’s name was also Madison and it was later passed down to his dad, making it a really special family name,” Johnson explained of her son’s unique moniker in the post.