Serena Williams makes surprise admission about pregnancy
By Merryn Porter |
Some pregnant women feel a connection to their baby from the moment they find out they are expecting, while for others, that maternal love does not come until after their child is born.
Tennis superstar Serena Williams has admitted she did not feel a strong bond to her now four-year-old daughter, Olympia, until after her birth, and even then said that the connection was not instant but had to grow.
Williams, 40, the winner of 23 Grand Slam titles, made the admission in an honest first-person account she wrote for ELLE to raise awareness of the fact black women in the US are almost three times more likely to die in childbirth.
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Williams also spoke about the moment she found out she was pregnant while in Australia and talked about the harrowing complications she encountered straight after her daughter's birth that could have ended in tragedy had she not been vocal.
Williams said she found out she was pregnant two days before the 2017 Australian Open and rang her husband Alexis Ohanian and asked him to fly to Melbourne so she could share the news in person.
She said she was eight weeks pregnant by the time she competed, and managed to win all seven matches in straight sets, despite feeling fatigued, adding she was determined to win each match quickly before the Melbourne heat "socked me."
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She said she had a wonderful pregnancy. "I settled into a whole new way of being. My life was just sitting at home, and it was wonderful. I still had plenty of work to do, but my focus narrowed to keeping myself healthy for the baby," she said.
When it came time to give birth, she initially "enjoyed" her contractions.
But with her baby's heart rate plummeting with each contraction, her doctor eventually said she would need a caesarean, and even though she had planned to give birth vaginally, she was relieved they had a "clear plan for bringing this baby into the world."
"I was nervous about meeting my baby. Throughout my pregnancy, I'd never felt a connection with her. While I loved being pregnant, I didn't have that amazing 'Oh my God, this is my baby' moment, ever," she said.
"It's something people don't usually talk about, because we're supposed to be in love from the first second. Yes, I was a lioness who would protect her baby at any cost, but I wasn't gushing over her. I kept waiting to feel like I knew her during pregnancy, but the feeling never came."
She said that she was finally saw her after the birth, she loved her "right away." "It wasn't exactly instantaneous, but it was there, and from that seed, it grew. I couldn't stop staring at her, my Olympia," she said.
But her joy would be short-lived. In the days that followed, Williams embarked on a battle for survival. In 2010, she had learned she had blood clots in her lungs and she had feared them returning ever since.
She said she kept asking nurses to start her on heparin but "no one was really listening to what I was saying."
After she started coughing so badly she burst her stitches, doctors eventually discovered a series of blood clots, including one in her lung, but only after Williams insisted they carry out a CAT scan.
"Giving birth to my baby, it turned out, was a test for how loud and how often I would have to call out before I was finally heard," she said.
She eventually had four surgeries before she left hospital a week later and was initially so weak she "couldn't walk down the driveway."
"Despite my body's wreckage กช and the fact that I couldn't get in much breastfeeding กช connecting with Olympia at long last was amazing; it was both the reward and the validation for all I'd been through," she said.
"I went from not being able to really imagine her in the womb to us being completely inseparable. I still feel like I have to be around her for every day of her life, as much as possible. I'm anxious when I'm not around her. Honestly, it's a little much!"
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