Serena Williams shared insight into her motherhood journey on Monday, and shocked fans in the process by revealing just how much her eldest daughter, Olympia, had grown. The 44-year-old was glowing as she posted a photo of herself on Easter Sunday beside her two daughters, Olympia and Adira, as they prepared to celebrate the holiday with her extended family.
Eight-year-old Olympia almost reached her mother’s shoulder in the snap as she struck a pose, while clad in a pastel-colored floral dress with mini silver heels. She looked so grown up as she stood beside her two-year-old sister, who sported a blue dress with floral embellishments, a white cardigan and sparkly shoes.
Serena looked regal in a flowing blue dress with draped sleeves and a blue belt to cinch in her waist. She added gold jewelry to match and wore her brunette-blonde tresses in a half-up, half-down style.
“I don’t share these moments often, but being their mom is my favorite place to be,” the tennis champion wrote in the caption. “I’m with them 363 out of 365 days a year – and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. This weekend was everything.”
Fans took to the comment section to share their surprise over Olympia’s growth spurt, with one writing: “How is our niece Olympia so tall already?!?” while another added: “The girls are growing up so fast!”
Elsewhere in the carousel of photos, Olympia and Adira’s dad, Alexis Ohanian, joined the family for a sweet snapshot before they met with their extended family, including Serena’s sister Venus Williams and her new husband, Andrea Preti, as well as Serena’s older sister, Isha, and their mother, Oracene.
© InstagramSerena has been incredibly open in the past about her motherhood journey and revealed the extensive health complications that arose after the birth of Olympia in September 2017. “It began with a pulmonary embolism, which is a condition in which one or more arteries in the lungs become blocked by a blood clot,” she wrote in a 2018 essay for CNN. “Because of my medical history with this problem, I live in fear of this situation. So, when I fell short of breath, I didn’t wait a second to alert the nurses.”
See more of Serena with her adorable daughters below…
“This sparked a slew of health complications that I am lucky to have survived,” Serena continued. “First, my C-section wound popped open due to the intense coughing I endured as a result of the embolism. I returned to surgery, where the doctors found a large hematoma, a swelling of clotted blood, in my abdomen.”
“And then I returned to the operating room for a procedure that prevents clots from traveling to my lungs. When I finally made it home to my family, I had to spend the first six weeks of motherhood in bed.” The athlete later told Harper’s Bazaar UK about her experience with post-partum depression after recovering from Olympia’s birth.
© Instagram“I think people need to talk about it more because it’s almost like the fourth trimester, it’s part of the pregnancy,” she said. “I remember one day, I couldn’t find Olympia’s bottle, and I got so upset I started crying…because I wanted to be perfect for her.”
© Getty Images for W+POnce Adira was born in August 2023, Serena had well and truly settled into motherhood, yet still felt nervous about welcoming another child into her life. “I was like, ‘Okay, I don’t know if I can like anyone as much as I love Olympia.’ I was really nervous about that. But I feel like it all worked out,” she told ET.
Serena shares her girls with Alexis, the co-founder of Reddit, who tied the knot with the A-lister in 2017 after they met in a hotel in Rome in 2015.
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