Healing the Tigress Ep. 43 - On the Grief of Losing Your Mother and Prenatal Depression with Serein Wu
We've had several guests on the podcast talk about postpartum depression, but fewer have notably admitted or recognized depression during pregnancy too. In today's episode, our guest Serein Wu shares about how she was worried about postpartum depression with her mental health history going into motherhood, but she did not expect to have prenatal depression while she was pregnant too.
Serein goes into depth sharing her story about the complicated emotions of losing her mother, who she shared a very close relationship with, before becoming a mother herself. Then when she thought she was ready to conceive, the pandemic had started closing in on the world and Serein suddenly found herself even further isolated from loved ones while navigating pregnancy without her mom and/or community. In the episode, we dive deeper into:
- Maternal health care during the pandemic
- Serein's traumatic birth with PUPPP (Pruritic Urticarial Papules and Plaques of Pregnancy), pre-eclampsia, and an emergency C-section
- Prenatal depression, postpartum depression, and ways to heal--including Serein's thoughts on how she wished she had tried medication in hindsight
- The shame of not bonding with your baby right away and recognizing that not everyone has that instantaneous connection
- Serein's work of moving through the grief of not having her mom with her through her motherhood journey and finding pieces of her mom in her life now
- Deciding whether or not to have a second child while also considering her partner's experience in this parenthood journey
Serein Wu is a Taiwanese/Chinese American mother, a certified nutritionist through Precision Nutrition, and a Lagree Level 2 certified fitness instructor. She has dedicated her career to helping people improve their overall well-being and has had 10 years of experience creating digital content on her YouTube channel, her blog, and more.
Find more of Serein:
Instagram: @sereinwu
TikTok: @sereinwu
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MoreSereinWu
We want to say a sincere thank you to Serein for being so vulnerable and open about your motherhood experience and loss, and we hope her story might help someone else out there who is also going through any similar stories.
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