Athletes are among the healthiest and fittest people on the planet. But, when it comes to pregnancy, there are just as many variables to contend with. Olympian Allyson Felix who, alongside husband Kenneth Ferguson, welcomed a daughter in 2018 (via People), opened up to HuffPost about how shocking it was to learn she was just as susceptible to developing a life-threatening condition — in this case, preeclampsia, which is related to high blood pressure — as everybody else. "Being a professional athlete, honestly, I took my health for granted," she admitted. "In my mind, I wanted to have this beautiful natural birth."
The Olympian was forced to have an emergency C-section, delivering her premature baby at just 32 weeks. Thankfully, Ferguson was by her side the entire time. As Felix recalled, "Things were going downhill. The doctor came in, and we had to start making some decisions about what we were going to do. [Kenneth] was really the one who had to advocate. I wasn't having a capacity to do those things."
Their daughter Camryn spent the first few weeks of her life in the NICU, which was understandably terrifying for her parents. Thus, Felix told Insider emphatically, "All Black women, all women of color are at risk. It doesn't matter how great of medical care that you have, or being a professional athlete. I never would've imagined that this would be my situation. And I think that that's what a lot of people think."
