Professional tennis player and new mother Serena Williams expressed the obstacles she’s had to overcome as a new mother.
The “Grand Slam” title winner spoke openly at a pre-tournament press conference on Sunday about no longer breastfeeding her 10-month old daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian.
The new mom revealed that she stopped nursing Olympia after six months and that she “cried a little bit” although her daughter was “totally fine.”
“That was a different thing. I literally sat Olympia in my arms, I talked to her, we prayed about it. I told her, ‘Look, I’m going to stop. Mommy has to do this,'” Williams said during the news gathering.
The tennis legend also discussed how breastfeeding affected her weight even after switching to a vegan diet and “training and everything.” She added that people who claim they’re “thin when you breastfeed” doesn’t always apply to new mothers and said that wasn’t her personal experience.
“Everybody is different, every person is different, every physical body is different,” Williams said in the briefing room. “For my body, it didn’t work, no matter how much I worked out, no matter how much I did, it didn’t work for me.” The athlete said she immediately began losing weight after she stopped breastfeeding and even lost 10 pounds in a week.
Williams also spoke about her upcoming match at Wimbledon and said she’s been really working on her serving strategy. “I often find the less I serve, the better I serve, which is totally weird.”
Although the mother of one is back on the tennis court, she’s been very candid about her breastfeeding journey and said she originally “planned on stopping in January. Then January became March. March became April. I was still breastfeeding… For me, it was really important to make it through three months, then it was important to make it to four months. I was like, ‘OK, I can do six months.'”
She added that she “wanted to say that so women out there know” the importance of motherhood struggles.
