Usually in the first trimester pregnant women should be more careful because the fetus in not yet strong. And through her statement on Today, Kerri Walsh Jennings, who won her third Olympic gold in beach volleyball at the London Olympics, shares about her secret pregnancy.
“When I was throwing my body around fearless, and going for gold dor our country, I was pregnant, and today I’m 11 weeks pregnant,”Walsh Jennings says.
Walsh Jennings, mother of two son, Joseph Michael (Joey), 3, and Sundance, 2, had miscarriage before having her first son. She awares of the situation, but on her game in London Olympic was different. “I gave everything I had,” she said. In fact, the prospect of having baby was a big motivator throughout her training and competition, her husband, Casey, also a professional volleyball player, has joked that she gets a baby for every gold medal. “At the end of my tunnel was this next phase, expanding my family,” Walsh Jennings said. “I wanted to earn that third.”
Walsh Jennings and Casey started trying for their third before the Olympics, but the pregnancy came faster than she expected. The change about her feeling became “moody and touchy” in London and her period was late, it can be inferred 3 things, abd the greates likelihood is pregnancy.
“I’m a pretty happy girl and I was unreasonably moody,” Walsh Jennings said, asking her husband if that was accurate, and he smartly demurred.
“I thought it could have been the stress of the games and travel kind of throws your schedule off, but I knew. At some point, you’re late and then you start feeling something. And I definitely started feeling something in London.”
Her third pregnancy is not as easy as her two pregnancy before. “This little one is kicking my butt! The first two were pretty easy, but with this one, I’m sick every day, I’ve got some awesome acne, I just feel different.”
When asked whether the couple considered perhaps waiting to try to expand their family until after the Olympics.
“I just felt like it would take me a while this time to get pregnant for some reason,” she said. “So a month before, we’re like, ‘Should we start trying?’ I had never experienced morning sickness. We were in Gstaad, Switzerland, one of my favorite places, our favorite places, in the world … we decided just to get going on the process.”
About concerns in the first trimester of pregnancy related to Walsh Jennings, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, answer that “the risk she put to herself and fetus was zero to none.”
“The embryo is microscopic. It’s just implanted in the lining of the uterus,” Snyderman says. “It would take an act of God to dislodge it, not a bump on the tummy, not a dive.”
“At the London Games, Walsh Jennings’ five-week-old pregnancy was well protected within the muscular uterine wall and the layers of muscles around the abdomen,” Snyderman says.
“Imagine taking the head of a pin and sticking it inside softball and then a kickball and then throwing something against it,” Snyderman said. “That’s about what Kerri’s pregnancy was like at the time.”
Walsh Jennings is one of the super women, Her pregnancy or her condition after gave a birth does not prevented her to remain outstanding in what she does. Perhaps the history will repeats itself, she will get back in shape to compete her dream for another gold in Rio in 2016. s.
“I have to play in an itty bitty Oakley bikini and it’s very inspiring,” Walsh Jennings says in a Q & A on the NBC Olympic site. “My job is to be fit and I’m really blessed that I get to go and work out and live a really healthy lifestyle. And I have to in order to accomplish my goals. I want to be the best. I want to win a gold medal in London. And in order to do that, I need to be really fit regardless of my babies. My body has certainly changed. I love some of the changes. I hate others. But ultimately if I’m fit and strong, then I’m a happy girl.”
Pregnancy and children are not her weekness, on the other hands those are some kind of extra streghth for Walsh Jennings. Her plan and goal for Rio Olympics in 2016. “I want it,” she said of a fourth gold. “I feel like I have so much more to learn, so much more to accomplish. I’m planning on coming back stronger and smarter.”
