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Mario Testino

Some mother-daughter preciousness…

Serena Williams Covers VOGUE With Her Daughter

A tennis legend is showing off her beautiful baby girl on the cover of VOGUE. Serena Williams is the publication’s February cover star in an issue dedicated to family where she opens up on motherhood, marriage, and making her comeback.

Inside she poses with her ‘oh so precious daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr

Mario Testino

as well as her husband Reddit co-founder (Big) Alexis Ohanian.

Mario Testino

In addition to taking gorgeous glamour shots for photographer Mario Testino, the athlete dishes on motherhood;

“We’re not spending a day apart until she’s eighteen,” Serena says, only half-joking. “Now that I’m 36 and I look at my baby, I remember that this was also one of my goals when I was little, before tennis took over, when I was still kind of a normal girl who played with dolls.”

and reveals that she secretly had a scary medical ordeal after giving birth via emergency c-section. Serena told VOGUE editor Rob Haskell that she suffered from another pulmonary embolism (the condition that sidelined her in 2011) shortly after giving birth, had a hematoma after her C-section wound opened and she was bed-ridden for six weeks.

Her fresh C-section wound popped open from the intense coughing spells caused by the pulmonary embolism, and when she returned to surgery, they found that a large hematoma had flooded her abdomen, the result of a medical catch-22 in which the potentially lifesaving blood thinner caused hemorrhaging at the site of her C-section.

She returned yet again to the OR to have a filter inserted into a major vein, in order to prevent more clots from dislodging and traveling into her lungs. Serena came home a week later only to find that the night nurse had fallen through, and she spent the first six weeks of motherhood unable to get out of bed.

“I was happy to change diapers,” Alexis says, “but on top of everything she was going through, the feeling of not being able to help made it even harder. Consider for a moment that your body is one of the greatest things on this planet, and you’re trapped in it.”

Wow, who knew Serena was secretly suffering after having her baby?

More from Serena’s VOGUE cover and spread on the flip.

Mario Testino

Mario Testino

On playing her big sister Venus:

“I know how hard she works. I hate playing her because she gets this look on her face where she just looks sad if she’s losing. Solemn. It breaks my heart. So when I play her now, I absolutely don’t look at her, because if she gets that look, then I’ll start feeling bad, and the next thing you know I’ll be losing. I think that’s when the turning point came in our rivalry, when I stopped looking at her.”

Have you been following little Alexis Olympia on Instagram? Serena recently shared this photo of her baby girl.

View this post on Instagram

Heyyyy Ms. Parker 🙄

A post shared by Alexis Olympia Ohanian, Jr. (@olympiaohanian) on

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