Robert De Niro’s girlfriend, Tiffany Chen, is opening up about her scary postpartum journey. In a Thursday preview of her interview with Gayle King on CBS Mornings, Chen revealed that she was diagnosed with Bell’s palsy after giving birth to her daughter Gia Virginia, her first with the actor.
Shortly after welcoming little Gia in April, Chen told King that when she returned home, she “started to feel like, my tongue felt strange. It felt a little tingly, just starting to get a little bit numb.” Chen quickly realized that her “face just felt weird. I didn’t know what the feeling I was having, it just felt weird.” Chen added that she could see a difference in her face at the time, sharing, “it was just like everything was starting to just fall down on itself. Like, my face was melting on itself.” According to the new mom, her condition only continued to deteriorate.
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“And then a week after giving birth, that was when it all hit. And I called my doctor. I was trying to eat. I went to put a fork of food in my mouth and everything came out. I couldn’t eat. And I was starting to slur,” she recalled. “So I said, ‘There’s something really going on here.’ They said, ‘Go right to the hospital.’ [They] admitted me, and I lost all facial function the minute I got into the hospital.”
Chen, who is set to share more about her health journey when her full interview with King airs on Friday, was ultimately diagnosed with Bell’s palsy, “a condition that causes sudden weakness in the muscles on one side of the face,” according to Mayo Clinic, which also notes that “in most cases, the weakness is temporary and significantly improves over weeks. The weakness makes half of the face appear to droop. Smiles are one-sided, and the eye on the affected side resists closing.”
De Niro, 79, first revealed he welcomed his first child with Chen, and his seventh child overall, during an interview with ET Canada in May. At the time, the proud new dad shared, “I just had a baby.” He revealed his little one’s name and first picture a few days later, sharing that he was “over the moon.” Gia joins the Oscar winner’s six other kids: Drena, 51, and Raphael, 46 – whom he shares with his first wife, Diahnne Abbott – his 27-year-old twin sons Aaron and Julian – whom he shares with his ex-girlfriend Toukie Smith – and Elliot, 25, and Helen, 11 – from his marriage to his ex-wife Grace Hightower.
