CULTURE

Serena Williams Gives Birth To Her First Child

The tennis champion is a mom!


"Rei Kawakubo/Comme des Garcons: Art Of The In-Between" Costume Institute Gala - Arrivals
Karwai Tang

Serena Williams has officially added her most important title yet to her many tennis accolades: mom. The tennis star and her fiancé, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian have welcomed their first child, a girl, on Friday afternoon at St. Mary’s Medical Center in West Palm Beach, reports The New York Daily News and US Weekly.

Williams announced the news of her growing family in April via an accidental post to Snapchat, but not before making history by competing in and winning the Australian Open in January while in her first trimester. The tennis champ then appeared — very purposefully and very nude, we might add — on the cover of Vanity Fair’s August 2017 issue, where she proudly bared her bump and spoke about her feelings on tackling motherhood.

“It just doesn’t seem real. I don’t know why. Am I having a baby?” she told Vanity Fair. “If you would have told me last year in October or November that I would have a baby, not be pregnant but have a baby, I would have thought you were the biggest liar in the world. This is kind of how I am right now. This is happening sooner than later, and it’s going by so fast.” She added, “I don’t know what to do with a baby.”

Still, throughout her pregnancy, Williams kept followers updated on her preparations for her new addition. She and Ohanian attended a “baby class” where they became skilled swaddlers, and the tennis star even took to Twitter to ask for advice on sleeping comfortably while pregnant. And of course, nothing could keep this mom-to-be off the court; the G.O.A.T. continued to wield her racquet well into her third trimester.

Williams and Ohanian first met in 2015. The couple told the world of their engagement, appropriately, in a post on Reddit in December 2016. This is the first child for both. Congratulations to the new parents!

Related: Go Inside Serena Williams’s Star-Studded, ’50s-Inspired Baby Shower

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