Photo: Mallory Weggemann/Instagram
Paralympic gold medalist Mallory Weggemann and her husband Jay Snyder have invited PEOPLE to follow their journey as they grow their family.
Mallory Weggemann’s due date is drawing near.
“We hit 31 weeks, which is so surreal,” the Paralympic gold medalist tells PEOPLE exclusively. “We’re feeling good.”
It hasn’t been easy for the couple to reach this moment.Weggemann, 33 and her husband Jay Snyder have been through a long IVF journey, all while navigating Snyder’smale-factor infertilityand Weggemann’sParalympic swimming career.
Through it all, they were open with fans and followers about their struggles. “Jay was adamant that we have the conversation around male infertility,” Weggemann says. “Society needed to see a couple who said, ‘Actually, it’s the non-disabled spouse that has the fertility struggles.”
Since then, Weggemann has been publicly documenting herpregnancy, refuting the idea that female athletes have to choose between their careers and motherhood and destigmatizing parents with disabilities. “So often we form our perceptions of what we think is possible based on what we see emulated in the world around us,” she says.
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It’s why Weggemann feels so grateful to be able to share her healthy pregnancy. She even raced at the 2022 US Para Swimming Nationals in December when she was 26 weeks. “It was really special getting behind the starting blocks pregnant,” she says. “I’ve loved the sport of swimming since I was a little kid, and to be able to share that in some way with Little One is something that I think I’ll remember forever.”
But even with her body changing, the world-class athlete still took silver in the 50m butterfly, and made it to finals in all three of her events.
It was an especially proud day for Weggemann, who knows how important it is for other female athletes to know that they can also be moms. “For so long it felt like it was an either/or conversation in athletics,” she says. “It was powerful to be able to, in that moment, continue to be a part of this conversation that’s happening in sports around this desire for female athletes to have the option to continue their careers through parenthood and motherhood.”
Another cause close to her heart: bringing awareness to disability representation in parenting.
“In the disabled community, we are still having conversations and fighting for equality and equity, and then you go and bring parenthood in addition to that,” she says. “We in our society do not have great representation of showcasing individuals with disabilities as parents. We don’t celebrate that.”
She continues: “You read all your parenting books, and nothing talks about how to navigate through adaptive parenting. You buy your products for the nursery, but nothing’s out there giving you accessible options for integrating those products to care for your child. Even in healthcare, you go in for your ultrasound; you hope and pray you’ve got a good clinic that’s updated with an accessible ultrasound table.”
“That’s challenging — I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” she says. “I’m excited to meet Little One and hold them, and be together as a family, and figure out who they are, but the mechanism to actually get us to that moment is pretty big and heavy.”
“There’s going to be a lot of creating moments of space to try to process and prepare as best as I can for the reality that, in order to have what is going to be the most joyous day in our little family’s life, I have to literally, relive the most traumatic day of my own.”
Most importantly, she can’t wait to show the world that motherhood is still an option for athletes with a disability.
“At the meet, one of the officials told me how their 11-year-old daughter, who is a wheelchair user, had been following me on social media,” she says. “She came into the kitchen one day and told her parents, “I didn’t know that women in wheelchairs could have babies.”
Hearing this meant the world to Weggemann and Snyder.
“That obviously strikes a chord with me because of disability, but I think it can resonate with people beyond disability,” she says. “If there’s one young girl out there, or young woman, or a man, or a couple, who see our story and realize, ‘There’s a path forward for us to be parents, we can do this,’ then that’s what this is all about.”
“One 11-year-old girl now knows that someday, if she wants to have a family, she can have a family, and the fact that she has four wheels attached to her is not the reason she can’t.”
source: people.com
