Paralympian Mallory Weggemann on IVF, Postpartum Mental Health, and Paris Prep as a New Mom

I have a whole new appreciation for what my body is capable of. We came home from the Tokyo Games, and as a result of the pandemic and the postponement of Tokyo, it turned our normal four-year quad from one Games to the next into a three-year quad. So while we had five years to get to Tokyo, we had three years to get to Paris.

Watching everything my body did through that season—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—I look back and I see all the ways that my body served me over the past two and a half years, and it’s remarkable.

From a mental, emotional, and physical standpoint, I’m in awe of what my body is capable of and all that it’s done over the past few years.

Courtesy of Mallory Weggemann

Your journey to motherhood and your openness about going through IVF inspired and helped so many people. How did you and your husband navigate the emotional and physical challenges of this process in the public eye?

It instinctively felt the right thing to do because people don’t talk about it, but that feeds into this notion of, “You get married, you want to have kids, you get pregnant, and you have a baby.” Neither Jay nor I wanted people on the outside looking in to not know the truth of our journey. We didn’t want to perpetuate the isolation and loneliness that we felt for so long, after seeing pregnancy or birth announcement after announcement.

Plus, the truth of it is that in our society, we assume infertility is a women’s health issue, but that’s not our story. Sharing it was really scary at first, and the nerves were about letting people in to something where we didn’t know the outcome. Heartbreak and grief are also inevitable parts of IVF because I don’t think you can go through it without experiencing loss to some extent.

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