Eva Mendes didn’t imagine herself as a mom until meeting Ryan Gosling

Parenthood wasn’t a chapter Eva Mendes initially envisioned in her life story.

As the actress and now-mother of two daughters, Esmeralda, 4, and Amada, 2, recently told Women’s Health, crossing paths with longtime partner Ryan Gosling changed her perspective.

“Ryan Gosling happened,” Mendes, 45, said. “I mean, falling in love with him. Then it made sense for me to have … not kids, but his kids. It was very specific to him.”

Though becoming a mom was the “furthest thing” from Mendes’ mind, after meeting Gosling, 38, on the set of “The Place Beyond the Pines” in 2011, fate had a change of plans. Mendes commended her “amazing support group” for helping out with the couple’s children.

“Ryan’s mom, my mom, Ryan’s and my sisters. It’s a village that helped us,” Mendes shared. “My heart goes out to women who do this alone. I basically come from a single-parent household; although I love my dad, my mom mostly raised four of us on her own.”

And while Hollywood isn’t the average neighborhood, Mendes works hard to give her girls a somewhat “normal” upbringing.

“What I try to emphasize is that I don’t let them see me put attention to how I dress. They’ve never seen me get ready for something; they’ve never seen me at work. Which is fine, for whoever wants to do it that way, but the way I keep it normal is by not letting them see me in these situations. I’m just Mom. And I’m more than happy to just be Mom,” she explained.