The reality TV star told INSIDE EDITION that the experience changed her "for the better."
Teresa Giudice is known as the tough-as-nails housewife, but she says serving time in prison was worse than she thought possible.
Read: 'Real Housewives' Star Teresa Giudice is Freed From Prison
“They made you strip down, squat and cough,” she told IE’s Les Trent. She said the experience was humiliating.
It was a far-cry from her life of luxury as a pampered member of the Real Housewives of New Jersey.
“The mattresses were disgusting, [they had] urine stains, blood stains,” Guidice recalled.
But she says the other inmates helped her get through it.
Photos of Giudice and her fellow inmates can be seen in her new book, Turning The Tables, which is all about her experience at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut.
Giudice says prison life was a lot like Orange is the New Black, which takes place at the same prison– especially those steamy sex scenes.
She named her room “The Boom Boom Room,” because, she said, there was, “a lot of sex going on.”
“I put the covers over my head and turn my face towards the wall and try go to sleep,” she admitted.
The worst part, she says, was the food. She said there were maggots in the rice and it was hot inside the prison. “We had no air conditioning. That was disgusting,” she said.
But Giudice said the truly hardest part of prison was “missing my girls and Joe.”
Her family came to visit every weekend and now they're bracing for another painful separation; her husband, Joe, goes to prison next month for three years.
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“We're just taking it one day at a time, spending quality time with our daughters, taking it day by day,” she said.
The rambunctious housewife says she “changed for the better” inside prison.
“I'm gonna live every day like it’s my last. I’m just gonna wake up every day with a smile on my face and try to be the best mom I can be,” she said.
Watch: O.J. Simpson Will Not Be Watching Miniseries About His Life From Prison
