In the first year and a half of her life, Shay Mitchell’s daughter, Atlas Noa Babel, learned how to crawl, walk, wave, point to birds in the sky, pick up rocks and offer them as presents, eat spinach off her parents’ plates, and parrot things her mother says, like: “I don’t knoooow!” It took that same time period—one and a half years, during which her baby has changed countless times—for Shay to finally feel like her pre-pregnant self.
“I hit the pause button,” she says of the confluence of a newborn, a pandemic, and a life devoid of travel and social activities. The actress felt lucky to be present with her partner, Matte, and Atlas, who was 5 months old when the pandemic ramped up, yet she was also unmotivated. “I…