Kerri Walsh Jennings Was Pregnant When Winning Her Third Olympic Gold, All Other Preggos Officially Lazy

Kerri Walsh JenningsKerri Walsh Jennings had quite an exciting summer. She was one of the first women to ever women three consecutive gold medals for beach volleyball with her partner Misty May-Treanor. The duo dominated the London Olympics and were really the talk of the town throughout the Games. Walsh Jennings had a major endorsement deal with Proctor & Gamble, a huge Olympic marketer, and was active in their mom-based advertising campaign. Oh and by the way, she was pregnant with her third child throughout most of it.

That’s right, the Olympic hero told Matt Lauer on The Today Show that she’s expecting her third child with her husband, fellow beach volleyball player, Casey Jennings. Kerri is 11 weeks along, meaning that she was five weeks pregnant when she and Misty won their third gold together.

I think I should add that up until this point in time, I felt really strong and proud about teaching Pilates classes while I was pregnant. I guess I was delusional.

Kerri says that she found out about the pregnancy while in London, while the Games were going on. The amount of crazy emotions going on in that woman during that week is honestly impossible to comprehend. I can’t even begin to imagine.

Kerri said that she had begun to feel moody and a little off. She was a few days late on her period. ”I thought it could have been the stress of the games and travel kind of throws your schedule off, but I knew,” Walsh Jennings told Lauer. ”At some point, you’re late and then you start feeling something. And I definitely started feeling something in London.” Her teammate Misty joked that she was probably pregnant, and it turns out that she was.

The plan wasn’t to get pregnant before London. Kerri and Casey said that they were really just starting to try for another the month before London. ”Apprently we’re very fertile,” she admitted embarrassingly.

Walsh Jennings is already a mom of two. She had two sons, Joey and Sundance, in between the Beijing and London Olympics. Now she’ll add a third, and maybe more, to her broad before heading to Rio in 2016 to try for a fourth gold medal. There’s obviously no worry about getting back in to shape for the big competition four years from now. Kerri has already proven that she’s more than capable of doing just that. And she takes a really straight-forward and logical approach to staying healthy, whether pregnant or not.

Before the London Games, she said this to NBC News. ”My job is to be fit and I’m really blessed that I get to go and work out and live a really healthy lifestyle. And I have to in order to accomplish my goals. I want to be the best. I want to win a gold medal in London. And in order to do that, I need to be really fit regardless of my babies. My body has certainly changed. I love some of the changes. I hate others. But ultimately if I’m fit and strong, then I’m a happy girl.”

Her common sense and honest approach is refreshing. And hopefully it energizes other moms to worry less about losing the “baby weight” and more about staying fit and strong. I think that’s such an awesome delineation to make, and one that I hope starts to catch on for all of us, even if we aren’t training for Rio.

(Photo: Christopher Halloran/Shutterstock)

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