Serena Williamsis expanding her family!
The pro tennis superstar, 41, is pregnant, expecting her second baby with her Reddit co-founder husbandAlexis Ohanian. The pair, who wed in November 2017, are already parents to 5-year-old daughterOlympia.
Williamsannounced the news on Instagramon Monday, sharing a carousel of photos of her and Ohanian. In one photo, Williams is holding her baby bump, and in another, the couple is standing next to one another smiling.
The post included the caption: “Was so excited when Anna Wintour invited the 3 of us to the Met Gala,” with a list of outfit, hair, and makeup details for theMet Gala.
News of Williams’ pregnancy comes after she shared a first-person essay forVoguelast year about her decision to begin an “evolution” away from tennis and her hopes of adding another little one to her family of three.
Williams also revealed she “never thought about having kids” when beginning her career in the essay.
“There were times when I’ve wondered if I should ever bring kids into this world, with all its problems. I was never that confident or comfortable around babies or children, and I figured that if I ever did have a baby, I would have people taking care of it 24/7,” she explained.
Though she has “a lot of support,” Williams said she’s also an “incredibly hands-on mother” to Olympia.
“In five years, Olympia has only spent one 24-hour period away from me. This past year, while I was recovering from a hamstring injury, I got to pick her up from school four or five days a week, and I always looked forward to seeing her face light up when she walked out of the building and saw me waiting there for her,” said the four-time Olympic gold medalist. “The fact is that nothing is a sacrifice for me when it comes to Olympia.”
Williams’ first birth experience wasn’t an easy one. The tennis championwas rushed into an emergency cesarean section, and after the delivery, a coughing fit made her wound reopen and led doctors to discover multiple,life-threatening blood clots in her body.
After her daughter’s arrival, Williams told PEOPLE that though she feltlucky to be alive, what followed was six weeks in bed recovering, all while trying to adjust to motherhood.
“My whole life I’ve been physically pushing my body to the limits,” she said. “And this is the one time where I couldn’t control anything. I couldn’t push my body. My body pushed to its maximum. That was so hard.”
Williams told PEOPLE in January 2021 about how thehappiness she has found in her husband and their daughterhas had a profound effect on her.
“It gives me a lot of reason beyond what I do, and so, it’s really important,” she said at the time. “I’ve been so focused on my career my whole life, but when I had a family and got married, I realized that there’s so much more to life. And that was great.”
She added of her changed perspective on life not always going as planned: “Not everything’s going to be perfect, not everything’s going to be great. You can’t go anywhere and expect, ‘Oh, I’m going to be perfect in everything. I’m going to win everything. I’m going to do everything.'”
“It’s not about how many times you fall. It’s about how many times you get up. That is most important. And it’s really good to just keep your mindset that way,” she continued. “And that’s what I’ve always said, really, a champion isn’t defined on how many wins they have, but how they recover when they fall.”
Source: People