Serena: How everything went bad when I had my baby
‘I’ve broken down so many times’
ON the court she seems invincible. But Serena Williams has revealed how becoming a mother nearly cost the tennis star her life.
the 36-year-old has told how her daughter Alexis Olympia was born by emergency caesarean after the infant’s heart rate fell dangerously low during contractions.
the surgery went well, and Miss Williams said the moment the baby was laid on her chest ‘was an amazing feeling – and then everything went bad’.
Following the birth the tennis star developed life-threatening blood clots on her lungs. After self-diagnosing a pulmonary embolism, the tennis star – who has a history of blood clots, and previously suffered an embolism in 2011, but was off her daily anticoagulant regimen – forced doctors to carry out a Ct scan that discovered the clots.
however, this was not to be the end of her ordeal. the violent coughing fits triggered by the clots caused her caesarean incision to come open.
During surgery to repair the damage, doctors then discovered a large hematoma in her abdomen caused by the blood thinner she was taking to stop more clots forming. this required yet more surgery to stop further clots travelling to her lungs.
A week after giving birth, Miss Williams was finally allowed home – only to suffer months of emotional turmoil and self- doubt about her abilities as a mother.
Remarkably, despite her trials, the 23-time Grand Slam champion returned to playing tennis last month, just three months after her daughter’s birth on September 1 last year.
In an incredibly frank interview, Miss Williams spoke about the guilt she suffered after Olympia’s birth and the ‘incredible letdown every time you hear the baby cry’.
‘I’ve broken down I don’t know how many times,’ she told Vogue.
‘Or I’ll get angry about the crying, then sad about being angry, and then guilty, like, why do I feel so sad when I have a beautiful baby? the emotions are insane.
‘Sometimes I get really down and feel like, man, I can’t do this. It’s that same negative attitude I have on the court sometimes. I guess that’s just who I am.’
She added of motherhood: ‘No one talks about the low moments – the pressure you feel, the incred- ible letdown every time you hear the baby cry.’ When she returned to her Florida home after her surgery, Miss Williams, who is married to online entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, spent the next six weeks bedridden.
She kept the emotional struggles she was going through hidden, alluding only to the ‘complications’ of her birth in a series of short videos on social media.
Mr Ohanian, 34, said he also felt the strain as he wanted to help his wife but was unable to do much.
he said: ‘I was happy to change diapers but on top of everything she was going through, the feeling of not being able to help made it even harder. Consider for a moment that your body is one of the greatest things on this planet, and you’re trapped in it.’ Miss Williams, who calls her daughter by her middle name Olympia, said of her: ‘We’re not spending a day apart until she’s 18.
‘Now that I’m 36 and I look at my baby, I remember that this was also one of my goals when I was little, before tennis took over, when I was still kind of a normal girl who played with dolls.’
Despite returning to tennis last month, Miss Williams has not yet recovered her full fitness and last week she pulled out of the Australian Open, the first Grand Slam of 2018.
She that ‘although I am super close, I’m not where I want to be’.
In the interview, Miss Williams managed a joke at the expense of fellow tennis star Roger Federer, who has two sets of twins.
‘It’s so unfair. he produced four babies and barely missed a tournament,’ she said.
‘I can’t even imagine where I’d be with twins right now. Probably at the bottom of the pool.’
Miss Williams was photographed for Vogue by Mario Testino. The full shoot can be seen in the February issue of US Vogue.