Most women struggle with their postpartum bodies after giving birth, and supermodels are no exception.

Gisele Bündchen [1] – one of the most famous models on the planet – let her insecurities get the best of her after she finished breastfeeding her two children, Benjamin and Vivian.

In an exclusive interview with People magazine [2], she said that after nursing both of her kids for more than 18 months each, her self-esteem took a hit when she realised her breasts were now smaller than before and slightly uneven.

"I was always praised for my body, and I felt like people had expectations from me that I couldn't deliver," she told People. "I felt very vulnerable, because I can work out, I can eat healthy, but I can't change the fact that both of my kids enjoyed the left boob more than the right. All I wanted was for them to be even and for people to stop commenting on it."

So, in 2015, she quietly had surgery to receive a breast augmentation – a decision that, as she wrote about in her memoir Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, she instantly regretted.

"When I woke up, I was like, 'What have I done?' I felt like I was living in a body I didn't recognise," she said. "For the first year I wore [baggy] clothes because I felt uncomfortable."

Her husband, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady [3], supported her.

"He just said, 'I love you no matter what' and that I looked beautiful," she says.

In the end, she has accepted her new body, but the path to that realisation is one she wished she wouldn't have taken: "This was definitely another lesson: What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. But I wish I would have learned that a different way."