Ghost Whisperer star Jennifer Love Hewitt has opened up about something many parents can relate to – the sheer terror of being allowed to go home with your new baby.

“Those first couple of nights, it was wild,” said the actress, who is married to Brian Hallisay, her co-star in The Client List.

“When they let us bring her home I said to [Brian], ‘To get your licence you have to take a test. They check to make sure you’re a good human being to get behind the wheel of a car. They’ve given us no test! We just had a baby and now we’re going home.’ He was like, ‘I know, it’s terrifying!’”

But daughter Autumn James, 4 months old, has settled in to life with her now very capable parents.

Her husband is “fantastic. He’s great at diaper changing and at the football hold, which she loves,” said Jennifer. “It’s really 50-50. I feel very lucky that way! I do the stuff that I need to do as a mom and he does the dad part.”

Like most celebrities who have given birth, the actress has found the focus soon goes to losing her baby weight – especially given the taunting about her body after some unflattering photos were published in 2007.

“Having been somebody who has had to think about what my body looked like for 25 years, it was hard when it didn’t come off. I didn’t look like some of the girls in the magazines that I’ve worked with … who [the weight] does fall off for,” she says.

“I was like, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I had to have a conversation with myself. I had to look at her and think, ‘Would I want her to feel this way when she’s my age?’ I was like, ‘Get it together – your head’s in the wrong place.’

“It took nine months to get it this way, it might take nine months to get it back. If I have an hour to go to the gym or an hour to lie down and take a nap with her in my arms, I’m going to lie down and take a nap.”

A bit of swimming and Zumba are now being introduced, and “I hold her, we do squats, we dance, she listens to the music and she loves it. Or I put her in her little chair and she watches and thinks it’s really funny,” she shares.

“[Working out is] really jarring to your body. I don’t know how people go back and do CrossFit a week later. It’s just not me. I’m slowly getting back into it. I’m not that worried.”

Image of “Jennifer Love Hewitt” from Shutterstock