A doctor didn’t have to tell Jennifer Garner that she was pregnant for the first time because the Hollywood actress already knew! In a recent interview, the mom to Violet, 12, Seraphina, 9, and Samuel, 6 recalled the moment her doctor misread her first pregnancy test.

Apparently Jennifer decided to go see a specialist because her at-home pregnancy test results were “so faint” that it was hard to tell if she was expecting or now. After getting a “proper test,” the doctor told Jennifer that “you’re not pregnant,” but her maternal instincts were telling her otherwise. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I am. I’m telling you I am,'” the 46-year-old said before adding that she “just knew.”

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Jennifer and her daughters.

“So Violet’s 12, and I don’t use that doctor anymore, but I have her so I won!” Jennifer joked during a recent appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Though Jen said her first pregnancy with Violet was, basically, a breeze, her next two pregancies were anything but easy. “Every one I was more nauseous,” she said. “Each kid it was worse and worse.”

And when she was carrying middle child Seraphina, the actress admitted, “It got worse throughout the day. It wasn’t like [I was nauseous] in the morning and then I was fine. As the day went on, it was worse. For some reason Yo-Yo Ma got me through,” she told Ellen DeGeneres. “I would lie there in the bed, just waiting, and hoping I would fall asleep. It’s crazy, you do crazy things.”

When it came to her last pregnancy with her son Samuel, Jennifer was done playing by the rules. “Forget it, it was like Happy Meals,” she said. “It’s just gross. It’s just gross what you do.” But through the good and the bad times, Jennifer absolutely loves being a mom — and, while appearing on Ellen, she let other mothers know that it’s ok not to have everything planned out.

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Jennifer and her son, Samuel.

“Here’s the thing, you guys. You will get your bodies back; you will get your lives back; you can still travel; you can still have fun; you can still go back to work or not; you can breastfeed or not; you will be best friends with your kid and then someday you’re going to realize you’re actually angry with them and that’s okay,” Jennifer said. “You’re going to be great, because it’s your experience and your baby and your body and it’s going to happen the way you want it to because you’re starting your families.”

Today Jennifer co-parents her three children with her ex-husband Ben Affleck. “I love being a mom. I really do!” she told Ellen before admitting that it took her some time to get used to her changing body during each pregnancy. “One of the things for me being pregnant is… I carried a baby in the back as much as I did in the front,” she joked. “So I’d catch myself in the mirror and be like, ‘Ah! What is that? So big, oh my God — there’s another thing growing back there!'”

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Jennifer and Ben.