While promoting her latest smash hit album, 25, last year, she said that she no longer felt the urge to write sad love songs because motherhood has made her so happy.
But Adele, 28, has now revealed in a new interview with Vanity Fair that soon after she and partner Simon Konecki welcomed the birth of their son Angelo in 2012, she ensured a crippling bout of postpartum depression, reports the Daily Mail.
When asked if she plans to have another baby, Adele said she didn't think so, explaining: "I'm too scared. I had really bad postpartum depression after I had my son, and it frightened me... I didn't talk to anyone about it. I was very reluctant."
She eventually followed Konecki's advice to spend time with friends of hers who were also mothers, and recalled of the ensuing conversations: "One day I said to a friend, 'I f***in' hate this,' and she just burst into tears and said, 'I f***in' hate this, too'."
While other mothers' symptoms have included not wanting to be with their baby, or wanting to harm their offspring, the singer went on to explain that she was "obsessed" with her child.
"I felt very inadequate; I felt like I'd made the worst decision of my life," she told her interviewer Lisa Robinson. "Eventually I just said, I'm going to give myself an afternoon a week, just to do whatever the f*** I want without my baby."
Adele admitted that taking regular time out for herself often leaves her feeling guilty, but she believes it's the best way to get through the challenges of being a new mother to Angelo, who has an older sister from Simon's previous marriage.
Her revelations stand in stark contrast to her interview with on NBC's Today show late last year, when she told host Matt Lauer she'd "never been happier".
"And I've never been healthier. So I'm good," she added, while promoting the chart-topping follow-up to her previous smash hit album 21.
She even commented that being happy wasn't necessarily the ideal situation for an artist, explaining it made it "impossible" to pen songs for her album because, "to be honest, I wasn't sad".
The singer took four years off between albums to focus on her son Angelo, now four, with partner, 42.
Her little boy has, she said, made her a more emotional person "in every single way possible".