Serena Williams Breastfeeding
A Male Coach Told Serena Williams to Stop Breastfeeding For the Sake of Her Game – This Was Her Response
Serena Williams stopped breastfeeding months ago, but the emotional impact of her time spent nursing 11-month-old daughter Alexis Olympia are still fresh in her mind. In an interview with Time magazine, the tennis pro opened up about how breastfeeding made her feel almost supernatural.
"You have the power to sustain the life that God gave her," she said. "You have the power to make her happy, to calm her. At any other time in your life, you don't have this magical superpower."
"He's not a woman, he doesn't understand that connection, that the best time of the day for me was when I tried to feed her."
Shortly after her daughter turned six months old, Serena made the difficult decision to stop breastfeeding. "For me it was really important to make it to three months, and then it was important to make it to four months. And then I was like, 'OK, I can do six months,'" she said at a news conference back in July. "I literally sat Olympia in my arms . . . and I told her, 'Look, I'm gonna stop. Mommy has to do this.' I cried a little bit — not as much as I thought. And she was fine."
Serena also revealed that she felt the need to cease nursing when she wasn't losing the baby weight she expected to by breastfeeding.
In fact, she admitted to Time that she was told by a male coach to stop breastfeeding for the sake of her game.
"It's absolutely hard to take from a guy," she said. "He's not a woman, he doesn't understand that connection, that the best time of the day for me was when I tried to feed her. I've spent my whole life making everyone happy, just servicing it seems like everyone. And this is something I wanted to do."
