Serena Williams Reveals Her Near-Death Experience Amid Daughter Olympia’s Birth

Serena Williams is reflecting on the near-death experience that accompanied the birth of 4-year-old daughter Olympia. The tennis legend opened up about her traumatic birth experience in an essay for Elle, revealing that she didn’t have an immediate “connection” with her daughter while expecting her first child with husband Alexis Ohanian.

“I was nervous about meeting my baby,” she wrote. “Throughout my pregnancy, I’d never felt a connection with her. While I loved being pregnant, I didn’t have that amazing ‘Oh my God, this is my baby’ moment, ever. It’s something people don’t usually talk about, because we’re supposed to be in love from the first second.”

Williams said that feeling only came when she gave birth to Olympia in September 2017. “When I finally saw her-and I just knew it was going to be a girl, that was one thing I knew about her before we even had it confirmed-I loved her right away,” she shared. “It wasn’t exactly instantaneous, but it was there, and from that seed, it grew. I couldn’t stop staring at her, my Olympia.”

While the bond had formed, giving birth put Williams in danger of losing her life. Having been rushed into an emergency C-section when her baby’s heart rate began to drop, the athlete also had to advocate for her own health when an uncontrollable cough began to open her stitches. “I spoke to the nurse,” Williams recalled. “I told her: ‘I need to have a CAT scan of my lungs bilaterally, and then I need to be on my heparin drip.’ She said, ‘I think all this medicine is making you talk crazy.’ I said, ‘No, I’m telling you what I need: I need the scan immediately. And I need it to be done with dye.’”

Because of Williams’ persistence, doctors discovered that the tennis legend had a blood clot in her lungs that could have reached her heart if not broken up. Undergoing four surgeries, Williams was finally able to leave the hospital a week after giving birth, and despite the traumatic birth experience, the mother-of-one says it was totally worth it.

“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,” she shared. “I went from not being able to really imagine her in the womb to us being completely inseparable. I still feel like I have to be around her for every day of her life, as much as possible. I’m anxious when I’m not around her. Honestly, it’s a little much.”