Laure Manaudou shows herself as we have never seen her: with an open heart for the media Raw, she approaches frankly her year-long postpartum depression. The 36-year-old Olympic champion, mother of three, explains to the camera the difficulties she encountered after the birth of her third child. A particularly strong testimony the day after World Mental Health Day which presents another face of the sportswoman, in a relationship with the musician Jérémy Frérot.
For Raw, Laure Manaudou recounts the difficulties she had to face after the birth of her third baby and her postpartum depression. The high-level sportswoman is indeed the mother of Manon, 12 years old and born from her former relationship with the swimming champion Frédérick Bousquet. With the singer Jérémy Frérot, whom she married in 2018, she had two boys, Lou, born on July 18, 2017, then another little boy whose first name she kept secret, born on January 9, 2021. A first name that we now know genderless, as for Lou.
I felt like I didn’t know how to take care of my son.
Cash, Laure Manaudou declares: “I realized that I had a huge postpartum depression. It means that for a year, I was in depression. I felt overwhelmed, suffocated. It was too much in fact, it was oppressive. I did like everyone else, I didn’t call anyone. And frankly, it’s a shame. I didn’t understand myself. As an athlete, I had to be tough.” Convinced that she had no “right” to have a depression since it was her third child and that she therefore had to be more prepared, but also because she has a strong mentality of a top-level sportswoman, the young woman did not understand that she was nevertheless facing postpartum depression: “I was tired and upset. I felt like I didn’t know how to take care of my son when he wasn’t the first, he’s the third.”