At first, Serena Williams didn't believe she was pregnant. Despite the fact that she had unexpectedly thrown up and her breasts were enlarged, the tennis player laughed off a friend's suggestion that she might be pregnant, she told Vanity Fair in a recent interview.
But her friend, Jessica Steindorff, kept insisting that she take a pregnancy test. So, she took one — just to prove her wrong.
The test was such a joke to Williams that she actually forgot she had even taken it, she told Vanity Fair. It sat in her bathroom for an hour and a half (pregnancy tests usually take just a few minutes to process) while she got her hair and makeup done for an event that night.
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When she saw that the test was positive, she was so shocked that she took another, and another, and another, and another.
"Oh my God, this can’t be — I’ve got to play a tournament," Williams told Vanity Fair of her thoughts that night. "How am I going to play the Australian Open? I had planned on winning Wimbledon this year."
But all six tests Williams took turned up positive, and she could no longer deny that she was in fact pregnant.
Soon after she took her sixth test, Williams called her partner, Alexis Ohanian, and asked him to come to Melbourne, where she was staying to play in the Australian Open, sooner than he'd planned.
When he got there, she just handed him a paper bag filled with all six positive pregnancy tests.
According to Vanity Fair, Ohanian was also shocked, but there was not time for the couple to dwell on their news because Williams was scheduled to play in the Australian Open soon after they found out. Her first step was to check in with a doctor and make sure she could still play.
Since the pregnancy was so early at that point, her doctor told her it was fine to play — so she did, and she won.
When the news of her pregnancy got out, fans used the knowledge that Williams was pregnant when she won the Australian Open as further proof that she is an absolute queen.
But Williams didn't stop there. She has continued training throughout her pregnancy.
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And even though she's about six month along now, Williams is still a little shocked at the idea of becoming a mom.
"It just doesn’t seem real. I don’t know why," she told Vanity Fair. "Am I having a baby?"
And, honestly, her sheer amazement makes her seem just like any other expectant parent.
Welcome to Mothership: Parenting stories you actually want to read, whether you're thinking about or passing on kids, from egg-freezing to taking home baby and beyond. Because motherhood is a big if — not when — and it's time we talked about it that way.
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