by Sara McGinnis posted in Pregnancy

Serena Williams (new mom, tennis champ and general badass who isn't afraid to advocate for her own health) is sharing her daughter's birth story for the first time. Though lucky enough to have an enviably easy pregnancy, the 36-year-old went through a harrowing postpartum ordeal.
The drama began when Serena was rushed to have an emergency c-section after daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr.'s heart rate plummeted during contractions. Serena's new husband, Alexis Ohanian, was able to cut the cord and the baby girl was laid on her mother's chest.
"That was an amazing feeling," Serena recalled. "And then everything went bad."
As Vogue tells it:
The next day, while recovering in the hospital, Serena suddenly felt short of breath. Because of her history of blood clots, and because she was off her daily anticoagulant regimen due to the recent surgery, she immediately assumed she was having another pulmonary embolism. (Serena lives in fear of blood clots.) She walked out of the hospital room so her mother wouldn't worry and told the nearest nurse, between gasps, that she needed a CT scan with contrast and IV heparin (a blood thinner) right away. The nurse thought her pain medicine might be making her confused. But Serena insisted, and soon enough a doctor was performing an ultrasound of her legs. "I was like, a Doppler" I told you, I need a CT scan and a heparin drip," she remembers telling the team. The ultra...