Interview with Andrea Stefens: Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG)

Speaker 1: 0:10

hey guys, welcome back to pretty lions podcast. This is sarah and I've got whitney here and we have a very special guest. Guys, this is a topic that I want to say that, if this resonates with you, our deepest support is going to go to you. So welcome Andrea. She is going to bring us into touch with the world of HG or hyperemesis gravidarum. I might say it wrong over time HG what we're going to say for Sarah's sake on this episode. But welcome guys, welcome Whitney, welcome Andrea. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 0:44

All right, okay, we are so excited and, whitney, I know we've said we want to talk about this subject. Me and you both haven't experienced it, but, whitney, you may have had clients, but this is something that, when it, like we said, we saw the time, mental health is not discussed and then, I think, even so much things that we experience in pregnancy, that are physical, that impact us, are dismissed or gaslighted. So, andrea, I'm super excited for your voice and your story. So welcome and please share with us a little bit about yourself and then we'll kind of dive into why this topic is important to you.

Speaker 2: 1:21

Thank you so much. So my name is Andrea Steffens. I am a creative arts therapist and hyperemesis coach. I'm a mom of two awesome daughters that are 18 and 15. And I am a two-time survivor of severe hyperemesis.

Speaker 1: 1:37

And survivor is the key and our listeners will really understand further we go in this conversation of. That is a very you know, that's the most accurate description. So, andrea, let's start off. What is HG or hyperemesis?

Speaker 2: 1:51

Okay, so to just look at the name of it itself, hyper is too much. Emesis is vomiting, gravidarum is while pregnant. So it's not a real sexy thing, but that's what it is. And it's far, far beyond morning sickness. Like morning sickness you don't feel good, maybe you throw up once or twice here and there, you drink some ginger ale, you have some crackers, you get better and it ends pretty much usually around the end of the first trimester. Hyperemesis is diagnosed when the pregnant woman loses 5% or more of her body weight. That's a lot. It's a lot through vomiting and also has electrolyte imbalances and dehydration. So, as I said, I went through it twice. I lost more than 10% of my body weight. I was diagnosed pretty early, like at six weeks, by my OB, who was wonderful. I was very, very lucky. My OB was very proactive and she believed me.

Speaker 3: 2:59

So you had medical support with her, some work with her.

Speaker 2: 3:02

Yes, she was. She was on it from the beginning. In the beginning, you know, we had been trying to get pregnant for a year. But like any first time mom, you don't really know what to expect. So I went to see her at six weeks and she said you know how are things going? I'm like, oh, it's great. You know I'm throwing up five, six times a day, but that's all she. I remember her eyes like popped wide open.

Speaker 2: 3:25

She was like oh, she got out her little clipboard, wrote some notes and she she told me the term hyperemesis gravidarum and she said you know, I'm going to put you on some medications, which I didn't want to do, because who wants to take medicine while they're pregnant? But she said we have to cut this off at the past. I'm going to give you something called Zofran and within a week or two of that I was hospitalized. It got completely out of control. I was throwing up 20, 30 times a day. I couldn't keep anything down, even water. I was nauseous from the moment I woke up until I fell asleep and after I was. So they rehydrated me, kept me there for a couple of days and they gave me a Zofran pump which was supposed to keep it continuous and even though that did stop a lot of the vomiting, it didn't touch the nausea, so I still couldn't eat or drink and I ended up having nursing care at home, like a nurse would come over to change the bags and give me more medicine.

Speaker 2: 4:27

And in my I'm kind of bouncing back and forth between the two pregnancies. But in my second pregnancy it got so bad that they decided I needed a PICC line which they thread this kind of a tube through up over into your chest wall and they and it. I don't know if I'm explaining this well at all, but it's supposed to give you nutrition and medication. But within a couple of days of that I ended up getting a blood infection and a blood clot. So I was hospitalized for a month, and at that point I had a toddler. So I didn't see my daughter for a month. Oh bless you, I went down to a hundred pounds. I caught C diff in the hospital.

Speaker 3: 5:13

It's like if one thing happened, everything else did too.

Speaker 2: 5:17

Yeah, Like yeah. I felt I if, if something could happen, it happened to me, I would. I didn't want my doctor to even tell me there's a slight chance of X, y, z. I'm like something could happen. It happened to me. I didn't want my doctor to even tell me there's a slight chance of X, y, z. I'm like don't.

Speaker 3: 5:28

I'll get it. Don't tell me, because that's going to make it happen.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Gosh, whoa, whoa, that's all I can say. Is like whoa.

Speaker 3: 5:37

What was your family support like during this time? Because, I mean, you weren't around your other child, your toddler, for a whole month. You're hospitalized, you're not capable of doing anything at all.

Speaker 2: 5:49

I wasn't even capable of speaking to my daughter on the phone. That's how sick I was. I couldn't talk. But I again was extremely lucky in my family. My husband would, poor guy like, go to work, come visit me, go home. My parents flew out from California to stay with my daughter to give her some normalcy. I mean, it was like. It was like I was dying.

Speaker 3: 6:16

I was going to say, when you say survivor, that is legitimate in this situation, because you probably did feel like you were on your deathbed.

Speaker 2: 6:23

I literally did, because you probably did feel like you were on your deathbed. I literally did and I was having, you know, internal conversations with myself about should I keep this pregnancy, the second one, should I not? I thought about that the first time too, which made me feel terribly guilty because these were very, very wanted pregnancies, very, very wanted pregnancies. And, by the way, 15% of women with hyperemesis terminate their pregnancies. These are wanted pregnancies and when you think about and I'm very pro-choice, but it's a choice of a different kind it's like a choice with a gun to your head. I remember having these thoughts of you. Know, I'll keep the pregnancy unless the doctor says I'm dying and then I will have to terminate because I have another daughter at home. But every day I would wonder if the doctor was going to come in and tell me I was dying.

Speaker 1: 7:18

I can imagine, especially if women do not seek treatment for the extreme dehydration, that the very, very real risk of dying is on the table here.

Speaker 2: 7:31

People women do die from this.

Speaker 1: 7:33

They do I mean? Because if you think too of like even the fact that you're so dehydrated you fall, you hit your head or you get in a certain situation you can't get up, or you know the same thing that you think with elderly, sometimes right when they have the falls, and you find them and you're incapable of activities of daily life feeding, bathing, cleaning, working. You know, probably you needed someone to help you to the restroom, I'm sure, working. You know, probably you needed someone to help you to the restroom. I'm sure, like probably because you would try for a year and this is so wanted, and you're like what is happening? I never knew this was going to be like this and how many women experience this. What is kind of like the stats, like is it high number, low number?

Speaker 2: 8:28

So the number of women that experience severe hyperemesis or hyperemesis at all is between one and three percent, which sounds like a low percentage, which it is, but if you think about the number of women that get pregnant, that's a lot of women. It really is, and it's a very misunderstood condition, very misunderstood condition. There is actually, very happily, been some real inspiring movement on what causes it in the last couple of months that that information has come out. But for many, many, many years it was thought of as something that was psychosomatic. Maybe you don't want the baby, maybe you want more attention. I mean the amount of gaslighting that even I got with my wonderful care. I remember being in the hospital so sick I could barely speak, I couldn't move, and this nurse is like came in and was like, oh, you're pregnant, you should be happy oh not when you feel like you're circling the drain and the thing is, you're there you're there getting care and being told well, just be happy and it'll go away.

Speaker 2: 9:35

Ma'am, if that was the ticket to this, I would have done that months ago and you know, when you're talking about hyperemesis and mental health, that that sort of thing really impacts you. This, there is this societal cultural pressure of looking at pregnancy as something happy and something joyful. And you're glowing and you're only supposed to speak in these positive terms, only supposed to speak in these positive terms and to be going through the most god-awful thing in your life at the same time as you're supposed to be happy, and people are saying why aren't you happy? I had someone say you seem so mad. I hope that that the baby doesn't think you're mad at her. You feel like a failure and a monster, you know? Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 3: 10:26

I mean, while already battling, like you mentioned, the guilt that you had before with both pregnancies, of having HG to begin with, but also considering a termination, and you have your other daughter at home, you already had that internal battle taking place, you didn't need anybody else to add to it Exactly and I was lucky, you know.

Speaker 2: 10:55

I had my primary OB was supportive and believed me, and I had a supportive family. No one questioned my experience within my family. That is not, unfortunately, typical.

Speaker 1: 11:02

Oh sure. One thing that I'm wondering is how did you muster up the strength to go for the second baby? Because was it in your mind going okay, this is what I went through the first time. What if this happens again?

Speaker 2: 11:18

I mean it's when I one of the first things I said after I gave birth to my first daughter was oh, this is her way of saying she wants a sibling from Korea. Yeah, yeah, but yeah, you know, I felt like I had this great team behind me. I didn't think it could get worse. My doctor said you know, not everybody necessarily gets it a second time. Let's like hope for the best plan for the worst. I didn't think it could get worse, and it did, and I can sit here and say my girls were worth it 100 percent, 100 percent.

Speaker 1: 11:57

And you know, I think the big key takeaways we're hearing is it's not something that when we're trying to get pregnant, we're going. Okay, I have a 1% chance of this I have with perinatal mood anxiety disorders. I have a one in three chance of getting this. You know, postpartum psychosis I have a 2% chance. It's not like we're saying this to ourselves, right, and it's not like it's a normalcy of conversation, of, like moms who've had it, or medical professionals doing preconception counseling, talking about things to be prepared for. So it really is very similar to depression, anxiety. You're just thrust into it and there's really no way around it. You have to go through it. Right, and there's really no way around it. You have to go through it and that's so hard because you're already having a life transition. Now, with your experience, your normalcy is gone, Like the basics is gone, and I'm sure that took a toll on your mental health. I mean, how could you not feel depressed and anxious and lose hope?

Speaker 2: 13:04

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, I was not a therapist at that time, so I didn't have the words to express what I was going through, but I was depressed, I was anxious. I did end up with PTSD that I was diagnosed with later. It's terrible, it's terrible and, to add the guilt on top of it, it's so unhelpful. Again, I had this vision of what pregnancy was supposed to be and what I ended up with was people in my apartment building thinking I had cancer because I looked so sick and frail. The one thing at the time that really helped me and really inspired me is there's an organization called the Hyperemesis Education and Research Foundation hyperemesisorg, and they had message boards and I I was too sick to write on them a lot in those pregnancies, but I read them and just to know that there were other women out there that were going through this and I wasn't alone and I wasn't crazy and I wasn't and I wasn't a bad mom, I was just unlucky. Right it, it was so helpful.

Speaker 1: 14:22

I mean that's the case. There's a lot of people in our community yeah, to hear someone say it too, right. So you know it's not just me, or you know it's not something I did or I'm not the outlier, and we hear that all the time from listeners of the podcast, from our Prevalence Moms. I'm sure Whitney's therapy it's just, we will say something and they go oh my God, me too, that you described how I felt. You described what I couldn't say, and there is so much of that.

Speaker 1: 14:54

Is this the whole platform we stand for is for moms? No, they're not alone, because I think that's the thing. If you can fight the loneliness of of it's just me and figure out that community, that resources, if it is a message board, because you know what your husband's probably not going to really get, what you're going through. You know your boss is not going to understand your best friends who've had both the normal pregnancies, you know where they're just still hitting their workout class five times a week. You know that's a different ballgame, right Like and if we're talking mental health, or we're talking literally uncontrollable vomiting, dehydration, being care, either which way you roll with it, you got to have somebody to walk with you.

Speaker 2: 15:39

You absolutely do, and to advocate for you because you know. Imagine how you would feel after 200 days of the worst food poisoning you've ever had, or the worst stomach flu. How would you be able to make decisions for yourself? How?

Speaker 3: 15:55

would you be able to? You can't. Your brain can't function without those nutrients, but your body rejected them. Your brain can't function without those nutrients, but your body rejected them.

Speaker 2: 16:02

Exactly. If it's okay, I would like to talk about what causes.

Speaker 1: 16:07

HG. I was fixing to say I want to know because people they're trying to get pregnant, they're going okay. So what causes this?

Speaker 4: 16:16

Is there a risk factor?

Speaker 1: 16:17

Yeah, let's shine some light there.

Speaker 2: 16:20

Sure. So this literally came out within the last, I think, couple of months that they figured out what happened, what causes it. So everybody has a low level of this hormone called GDF-15 in their systems and if you have a normal level of it, you are set to where, when the nausea and vomiting hormone goes up during pregnancy, your body recognizes it. Oh, I've seen this, it's GDF-15. There's just more of it. I'm cool. But if you have a low level, abnormally low level of GDF-15 in your system, when it goes up during pregnancy, the body freaks out and thinks you're being basically poisoned. It treats it like an allergen and tries to make you throw up to get rid of it. That is what causes hyperhidrosis is a lower than normal level of GDF-15 before pregnancy. Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: 17:18

It does. And no one's testing for it right, like it's not like we're going in and saying what's my level?

Speaker 2: 17:23

no, I'm they just figured this out, yeah, so there it's. It's very, very hopeful information, but there's no treatment for it yet. There's no real test.

Speaker 3: 17:32

Yeah, I was wondering, I was like. Is there a supplement besides zofran and ivs and all the things to boost that hormone so that it can counteract the HG a little bit?

Speaker 2: 17:45

Not yet. Hopefully that'll come, but it's going to be slow in coming, because who wants to do testing on pregnant women Right? Well, that's our new new protocol.

Speaker 1: 17:58

We fight that when it comes to mental health. I mean, if you think about it, there's a lot of pregnant women in some sense are treated as the vulnerable population when it comes to when we're testing and medication and treatment and research. So we lag behind very much so on any progressive advancements. Because, just like you said, who wants to do research or test things on a mom with carrying a child? But I think the fact that you can go okay, this is why this is why it happened. Right, my body essentially was attacking this. Right, it gives you a little bit of that name entertainment. We say it, you know you have a little bit more of like. Okay, there's a reason.

Speaker 2: 18:43

You can take the article in and say to your doctor, say to your husband, say to your friends this isn't my fault, this isn't because I'm weak, right that and that's what I was thinking.

Speaker 3: 18:53

Yeah, is it not that it justifies? Justify isn't the right word, but it explains the symptoms and you think I'm not a crazy person. There is a biological reason for this taking place.

Speaker 2: 19:05

Right, right, it's a game changer. It is a game changer.

Speaker 1: 19:10

It's kind of the same sense of you know, when they came out with the new FDA approved postpartum depression drug, right. So it was the pill form that we all knew. We're still trying to figure it out, but there was this big campaign, right, and the biggest takeaway that we heard about this new research was oh, it's real. And I think the same thing applies here to HG. Is that, oh, it's real and it's like moms are going oh it's real.

Speaker 1: 19:39

But it takes headline. It takes a research paper for the ones around us and sometimes even medical communities to go oh yeah, she's not making it up.

Speaker 4: 19:50

No, and it's like why would you want to go grandpa?

Speaker 1: 19:54

Why would you want to be away from your daughter, from you wouldn't? And I'm so sorry that you had to deal with that. I'm so sorry that you had to deal with that. And I know you're. You know you're almost two decades out from that experience, but I can still tell how you talk about it. You relive that, you feel it still. You go back to that. That's very real to you.

Speaker 2: 20:13

It is. It is. It was a trauma. My pregnancy was a trauma.

Speaker 3: 20:17

Well, I was about to say it's multiple layers of trauma. It's the physical aspect, but then the separation from your daughter and your family being in the hospital, getting gaslit by the provider who's giving you the Zofran. You've got trauma after trauma after trauma. That's all kind of lumped together.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Yes, it's really true and, from what I've researched, about 18% of women that have hyperemesis end up with PTSD. I don't see how they couldn't?

Speaker 1: 20:46

Were you constantly worried about your daughters? Were you just like you know? Are they growing okay, you know, because the baby's taking. I remember one day during one of my scans and I did not experience this, but I had like a little bit of a sickness or something. And I don't worry, your baby takes everything from you. We're more worried about your nutrients. Is that kind of how?

Speaker 2: 21:09

does that work with these situations? Absolutely, I was terrified every time I would have to take a pill or get a bolus of the Zofran, or like counting off the number of days I hadn't eaten. I'm like, what am I doing to this baby? Is she going to be okay? Is she going to have brain damage? They, my babies, were born very small. They were both full term and they were both under six pounds. They didn't. They were healthy, small but mighty. Okay, I like that, I love that. But, like with the second pregnancy, as soon as she was out my first, I was like just sobbing is she okay? Is she okay or is she okay? Because meaning, from nine months of sickness and all the medications and all the, the blood infection and this is not like, can you take a look at her and tell me, is she gonna live? And I was very lucky. I mean some women, their children do end up in the NICU. There's some research onto connections with some other kinds of issues.

Speaker 1: 22:11

It's scary, it is I was gonna say does it magically go away when you get birth, like what they say?

Speaker 2: 22:19

yes, that's like the baby's out, give me a veggie burger. It's crazy, I don't know. Within within 24 hours I was back to eating wow, that's wild.

Speaker 1: 22:34

I've heard that, but I've never met someone or asked. You know an OB? But that was I've heard and gosh, it's just like your body's like okay.

Speaker 3: 22:44

Well then the hormones shift. That shows how quickly the hormones shift.

Speaker 2: 22:48

Yeah, it's got to, but it's such a surreal experience. It's like I hear other women talk about being pregnant and how their experiences was. To listen to their stories and I don't relate like. I feel very much like I was sick for nine months and then someone handed me a baby.

Speaker 3: 23:06

Oh, I'm sure it probably feels isolating.

Speaker 2: 23:14

When I'm around people that have had normal pregnancies or at a baby shower. It is isolating. But women that have this that do reach out to other women that have this, there is a real passionate involved community.

Speaker 1: 23:24

Good. I think that's important to touch on is? You know, I had this issue because I had traumatic birth. So when I know some of my friends are fixing to give birth, I get really nervous for them, even postpartum with my depression seeing other people. I don't want them to have depression. You don't want them to have HG.

Speaker 1: 23:44

No one wants them to have any of this, but it is, it is a grief you know, whitney's taught me that like of a loss of our experience that we have to deal with, and I don't think that's talked about because none of this is talked about, right. So then for us to say I'm grieving the experience I expected or I wanted and I didn't get, and then I see it everywhere, everybody else having different experiences. It's hard.

Speaker 2: 24:07

It's hard and there's there's a tendency again in the culture to dismiss it. And if you had a terrible pregnancy or and or a terrible birth, but a healthy baby, just focus on that.

Speaker 3: 24:20

It's fine, you got what you wanted. You got the healthy baby Right. Fine, you got what you wanted. You got the healthy baby Right. Let me ask you this Did you have to have planned C-sections with your daughters because you had no strength to do a pushing delivery?

Speaker 2: 24:32

No, I had vaginal births, both of them.

Speaker 3: 24:36

I am so impressed because I mean how did you have strength?

Speaker 1: 24:39

She's like it's going to end, I've got to push.

Speaker 2: 24:42

Yeah, I mean, mean I was concerned about it, but I just had been so unlucky with so many complications, I was like I just don't want to do one more risky thing. I am gonna push this baby out.

Speaker 3: 24:57

Like I can do this, this I'm gonna control I mean you have warrior through it.

Speaker 2: 25:02

Oh, thank you. I I have to say and I this sounds weird, but the and this is not everyone's experience, it wasn't yours, sarah, but the births were the most like normal and easiest part for me. Honestly, I can see that complicated part Totally. Yeah, this is something I can do. This is something I have control over.

Speaker 1: 25:24

Right, yeah, gosh, andrea, wow, I am.

Speaker 1: 25:27

I'm just the fact that you have now I want to touch and turn it to this you have made it your mission to create awareness of this, support women who are walking through this, because unfortunately, it doesn't seem like this is going away for a while, and I think now even more so. We're inundated with social media of comparison, of everything's in our face, of everybody's lives, so it's even more lonelier when you're experiencing something like this and we're isolated more right, like the days of family coming to us or being next to us or having this village. So I can imagine women and you do work with women and we'll get to that. But how are you seeing now moms in this weird post-COVID, more demands on us than ever? How are they navigating this?

Speaker 2: 26:22

One step at a time. You know it's very hard. You were talking about the comparisons. It is very, very hard to be lying there sick with an IV in your arm looking at people doing these, you know, like gender reveals and like pregnancy, maternity shots, and it's sad and, as you said, sad. And, as you said, there is absolutely a grief of losing the experience you wanted to have, you should have had, you expected to have and you will not have.

Speaker 1: 26:55

No, and I think that's it. It's like it's pretty definite here, right Like it's like you know it's not going away until the birth happens.

Speaker 2: 27:06

That is not the case for everybody.

Speaker 1: 27:08

Okay.

Speaker 2: 27:10

Even me. After like 20, 22 weeks it got a little bit better. Okay, but some people have it terrible the whole way through. Some people get a little better. Some people have good days and bad days.

Speaker 3: 27:23

It kind of does its thing there's no real pattern or predictability to it.

Speaker 2: 27:30

No.

Speaker 1: 27:32

That's hard because we all feel so out of control in pregnancy, right, because we can't control what's happening in the baby, how the baby's growing. Is it okay? Right? And then you're adding on top of this what do you do? Okay, so let's talk to the mom who's going, that's me. What is some words of wisdom that you have now, as a therapist and a coach for this and a survivor, you're speaking to her. What would you say?

Speaker 2: 27:58

I would say please understand that you are doing the very best you can, no matter how bad it is. You are doing your very best. I would say try to look at this as it is you and the baby against the hyperemesis, as opposed to you against your body or you against the baby, that most people don't do that. But I would say, try to remember why you're doing this, that you are sick. You're so sick, but you're sick for a reason that when you look at a lifetime with a child, the nine months will seem short. Get yourself a.

Speaker 2: 28:44

Something that helped me was I rented a fetal Doppler. So on the days when I could not I felt like I couldn't last another 10 minutes I would put the Doppler on and just listen to the heartbeat and it would help remind me of the reason I was doing it. And do not be shy or ashamed or feel bad about asking for more help in whatever that means taking care of your other children, going to get more IVs, changing doctors if they're not being proactive, like I would just say you can do this. Please believe that you can do this.

Speaker 1: 29:21

I love that and you know, even to our listeners who've not experienced this, I think you can. I love that and you know, even to our listeners who've not experienced this, I think you can like this is such a story of strength, survival, perseverance that we can take away of. You deserve to be heard, you deserve to ask for help. You deserve to know this is a medical condition. This is not just you. You didn't cause this and I think that applies to a lot of things in pregnancy and postpartum and motherhood right, that you have a voice and you matter.

Speaker 1: 29:54

And we love when we think it's very important for survivors to have their voice heard, to share to those going through it, fixing to go through it, because you need to see those ahead of you who have overcome, who you can take from those lessons. I mean, that's really the motherhood journey is. It's like when you experience it, you need to pass on your knowledge and look to help in the same way. So I really appreciate that. How are you for our listeners? Tell us how you're helping moms, how they can find you. I can imagine again. I just can't imagine walking that and not having anybody in my corner who got it.

Speaker 2: 30:35

Absolutely so. I am now a hyperemesis coach. I can be found at hyperemesiscoachcom and what I do is I offer sessions for the moms where I can give them coping skills. I can give them support, encouragement, information. If I feel like they need to be seen by their doctor, I would tell them that I also do advocacy calls where I could do a Zoom with your husband, with your family, with whoever and explain what this is.

Speaker 2: 31:06

I also do groups and it's all virtual of women with hyperemesis and they can talk together that I will facilitate that. Or women who had it and they can talk about the experience they had. And partners groups where a bunch of because it's very isolating for the husband or the partner as well, like they won't know anybody that's been through this. What is that like for them? How can they best support their pregnant partner? Yeah, so I, I really. This is how I want to help other women is to really be their soldier in arms with them, you know the fact that you've taken something that most women could have been like I'm just never touching that again.

Speaker 1: 31:46

Right, that was traumatic. I survived that and we do this with trauma. We try to package it and put it away and it always reappears so thankful that you've worked through this and, again, sorry you've had to experience that so much, but so powerful and you're changing lives by walking through and I love how you said advocating and talking to those around them, because we're big with that and especially for our Prevalence.

Speaker 1: 32:12

Moms Whitney has some videos that she's done for them that's very specific, aimed at family, like in support, like this is what they need to be looking for. This is how they can help you. This is how you can talk to them about this, because no one's given you a rule, a toolbox or like a little guide of this is how to say this to my husband, which we've maybe never talked about this subject before, or maybe I was raised where women can't complain or I should be so grateful I'm pregnant because my friend had a miscarriage and I can't tell her I'm so miserable. You know all those things that are ingrained in us, so I love everything about that and we'll link everything for listeners who maybe you're in the car or does that for your kids and you're like, wait, I didn't catch that. You will see that in our show notes and we'll connect you to Andrea. But, andrea, before we let you go, this does not have to be on this topic, but we ask all our guests this Andrea, now a mom of grown daughters, what?

Speaker 1: 33:12

would you tell Andrea, who is, let's say, before six weeks, let's just say very first pregnancy line test about motherhood? What would you want her to know that would help her?

Speaker 2: 33:22

About motherhood. No, that would help her About motherhood, that it's always shifting, it's always changing, it's wonderful and it's hard and it's joyful and it's awful and it's fantastic and it's all the things and it's utterly, utterly worth it.

Speaker 3: 33:42

That is the best description of motherhood.

Speaker 1: 33:44

I was going to say. You described my whole morning, my yesterday, all summed up all those emotions.

Speaker 3: 33:49

I mean it hits the nail on the head. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 33:54

Andrea, we are huge fans of you. We appreciate you so much and we thank you, and I believe very much in my heart that this will find the ears of those who need this the most and will also create a huge awareness for moms, who this may be their road, that they have to walk in the future. So thank you so much for being on.

Speaker 2: 34:15

Thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 34:19

All right, guys. Thank you for being with us. We will be back next week, so we hope you guys have the great rest of your week.

Speaker 4: 34:25

Bye hosted by CEO founder Sarah Parkhurst and licensed clinical social worker, whitney Gay. Each episode focuses on specific issues relevant to pregnancy and postpartum. Join us and hear how other moms have overcome mental health challenges, as well as access tips and suggestions on dealing with your own challenges as moms. You can also browse our podcast library and listen to previous episodes at any time. Please know you're not alone on this journey. We're here to help.