Last week, tennis superstar and 23-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams announced her pregnancy on Snapchat to the excitement of her fans, but her reveal to the world didn’t go quite as planned.
For one thing, she told Gayle King at TED2017 Tuesday, she never meant to send the now-famous photo of herself captioned “20 weeks” publicly. She had been keeping track of her progress and accidentally added the photo to her Snapchat story instead of saving it to her phone.
Serena Williams is pregnant!! ❤️❤️ pic.twitter.com/u2RfhSzlcB
— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) April 19, 2017
“I was on vacation, taking time for myself, and I have this thing where I’ve been checking my status and taking a picture every week,” Williams explained. “I’ve been just saving it, but you know how social media is—you press the wrong button and… My phone doesn’t ring that much, and 30 minutes later, I’d missed four calls. So I picked it up and realized, ‘Oh no.’”
According to the Associated Press, Williams had planned to reveal her pregnancy soon anyway so the accidental photo being sent wasn’t a huge thing for her.
Williams also touched on her worries about playing tennis early in her pregnancy prior to the Australian Open—she found out two weeks before—and decided that she needed to play anyway. She won that tournament, securing her 23rd Grand Slam as well as retrospective respect from viewers who realized she she won it while pregnant. She won’t play for the rest of 2017 but plans to come back to the sport she’s dominated for so long.
“This is just a new part of my life,” Williams said. “My baby is going to be in the stands, hopefully cheering for me and not crying too much.”
H/T Associated Press