As Serena shared earlier this year in an essay for Elle, Olympia’s arrival into the world wasn’t an easy one. In fact, Serena’s birth plan was forced to change when Olympia’s heart rate kept dropping, leading the athlete to undergo a C-section. Then, after spending the night with newborn Olympia in her hospital room, Serena experienced “excruciating pain” in her legs and a consistent cough that burst her C-section stitches.
After a week in the hospital, during which doctors discovered a blood clot in her lungs and led Serena to undergo numerous surgeries, she was able to go home with her baby.
However, as Serena herself wrote in her essay, “Despite my body’s wreckage—and the fact that I couldn’t get in much breastfeeding—connecting with Olympia at long last was amazing; it was both the reward and the validation for all I’d been through.”