Serena Williams knew she was going to be mom to a girl because only a woman could handle the stress
Tennis champion could feel it in her gut that she was about to have a girl. The proud mother-of-one knew this because, in her words, she put the baby through tremendous stress. Serena shared this wisdom at the ongoing Tribeca Film Festival in New York City. While promoting the HBO sports documentary titled 'Being Serena: Her Story. Her Words," the Wimbledon champion said she trained rigorously for the Australian Open back in 2017.
This experience led her to have an intuitive feeling that she could be pregnant with a girl. She said at the film festival, "I just felt like beast mode. I put the baby through so much and I felt like only a woman can undergo this stress, so that is how I felt it had to be a girl."
According to Page Six, Serena was told her pregnancy wouldn't interfere with the Australian Open. However, she did feel guilty, perhaps as all expecting mothers do. She added, "Women have won marathons and stuff while pregnant. So once my doctor gave me the OK, I felt confident. But before I was nervous like, ‘Should I?’"
She went on to win the title while she was eight weeks pregnant and betrayed no signs of being pregnant while she was on the court. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Serena revealed that she found out about her pregnancy a few days before the tournament. It was during a training session that she felt something was "off." By this she meant, she had unexpectedly thrown up and found her breast enlarged.
Serena took a pregnancy test before she was going to promote a sports bra line later that day and forgot all about it as she prepared for the event. When she found out the result a few hours later, however, Serena was shocked.
"Oh my God, this can't be — I've got to play a tournament. How am I going to play the Australian Open? I had planned on winning Wimbledon this year," she told Vanity Fair. However, the pregnancy didn't stop her from being aggressive on court and her announcement in April 2017 shocked the world, in part because she played the Australian Open while pregnant. Now, her daughter is seven months old and the tennis star has finally made her return to tennis after taking a long hiatus.
