{"id":316220,"date":"2024-07-26T12:47:03","date_gmt":"2024-07-26T17:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=316220"},"modified":"2024-07-26T12:38:35","modified_gmt":"2024-07-26T17:38:35","slug":"paralympic-swimming-champion-giving-birth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/paralympic-swimming-champion-giving-birth\/","title":{"rendered":"Paralympic swimming champion headed for Paris one year after giving birth"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>

Mallory Weggemann, a Paralympic swimming champion<\/a>, is set to compete in her fourth Paralympic Games in Paris, and she’s doing it as a new mom.<\/p>\n

In 2008, Weggemann had been undergoing a series of epidural injections to treat shingles and the third one left her paralyzed from the waist down. After her sister took her to the University of Minnesota to watch the U.S. Team Trials for the Paralympic Games Beijing 2008, she was inspired to get back into swimming and became a champion. She has won five paralympic medals for swimming and is set to become the first disabled on-air correspondent for NBCUniversal\u2019s Paris Olympics coverage on CNBC and E! during the summer games.<\/p>\n

After giving birth to her daughter, Weggemann considered retirement but decided against it, and qualified for Team USA 15 months after giving birth. She\u00a0told Glamour<\/a> that she felt forced to choose between being a mom and competing as an athlete.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt felt like the expectation was that I would silo those two identities – athlete and mother – and break them apart,” she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t feel like there was a path forward that showed how this could work. We\u2019re still learning; more women are competing through motherhood and athletics, but we still don\u2019t have an abundance of representation showing us how.\u201d<\/p>\n

Becoming a mother has also given her a newfound appreciation for all that her body has been able to accomplish. \u201cWatching everything my body did through that season \u2014 going through IVF, pregnancy, competing at 26 weeks pregnant at Nationals, training as much as I could throughout, postpartum, and all that comes with healing following a C-section \u2014 I look back and I see all the ways that my body served me over the past two and a half years, and it\u2019s remarkable,” she said. [Editor’s Note: Though Live Action does not support the use of IVF (read more <\/i>here<\/i><\/a>)<\/em>, we believe that all human beings, regardless of their means of conception, have human dignity and value, and are worthy of the right to life. This includes embryos who may die, be destroyed, or remain perpetually frozen as a result of reproductive technologies.<\/i>]<\/p>\n

READ: Top Myths DEBUNKED: The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists<\/em><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

She also admitted to struggling with postpartum mental health, which was part of what had led her to consider retiring.<\/p>\n

“I always had this dream of racing as a mom and competing as a mom, but there was a period of time after Charlotte was born that was so tough for me. It wasn\u2019t because I don\u2019t love to swim; I just didn\u2019t feel like there was a path forward that showed how this could work,” she said. “But finally, through the support of my community, I realized that there’s space for me to bring all of it into who I am and the totality of who I am, and I started feeling like I had that path forward. It was a challenging time because for most of it, quite frankly, that conversation of ‘Is it just time to let it go?’ felt like it was being driven by external factors and not having the support that I needed. I just felt like there wasn\u2019t a place to do this as a mom, and I knew that my relationship with Charlotte was not something I was even remotely willing to sacrifice.”<\/p>\n

Track-and-field superstar Allyson Felix is helping women like Weggemann, who are both athletes and mothers, have more support. In 2021, she created a childcare fund<\/a> with $200,000 in grant money to cover childcare costs for qualified athlete moms competing in the Tokyo Olympics; most of those athletes did not have corporate sponsorship. For this year’s games, Felix teamed with Pampers to create the first-ever Pampers nursery<\/a> in the Olympic Village, allowing athletes to spend time with their children while they compete.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just knew how difficult it was to compete at the top level after I had my daughter, and some practical things were really hard. And so when I joined the Athletes Commission of the IOC, I really wanted to be that voice for athlete moms, and just take away one less thing for them to worry about in the pressure of competition,\u201d Felix said. \u201cI think it really tells women that you can choose motherhood and also be at the top of your game and not have to miss a beat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Weggemann also stressed the importance of disability representation, taking place for the first time during this year’s games.<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m really excited for it. It\u2019s a really unique opportunity; an active summer athlete has never done this,” she said. “We\u2019ve never had a disabled host in the US for the Olympics before either. I\u2019m doing what I love while also serving as a path forward for the disability community in a world in which we\u2019re yearning to see representation and media and entertainment. That\u2019s really special too.”<\/p>\n

The DOJ put a pro-life grandmother in jail for protesting the killing of preborn children. Please take 30-seconds to TELL CONGRESS: STOP THE DOJ FROM TARGETING PRO-LIFE AMERICANS.<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mallory Weggemann, a Paralympic swimming champion, is set to compete in her fourth Paralympic Games in Paris, and she’s doing it as a new mom. In 2008, Weggemann had been undergoing a series of epidural injections to treat shingles and the third one left her paralyzed from the waist down. After her sister took her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":316250,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[9455,3473],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nParalympic swimming champion headed for Paris one year after giving birth<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mallory Weggemann, a Paralympic swimming champ, is set to compete in her fourth Paralympic Games in Paris, and she's doing it as a new mom.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/paralympic-swimming-champion-giving-birth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Paralympic swimming champion headed for Paris one year after giving 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