The title “supermom” gets thrown around by the media ad nauseam, and this week was no exception.
On Monday, NBC’s Today show went all out to crown multi-Olympic gold medal- winning beach volleyball champ Kerri Walsh Jennings as a super-duper mom. Not because she throttled her opponents in London while juggling duties as a wife and mom to two toddler sons, but because she did so while she was five weeks pregnant with her third child.
“When I was throwing my body around fearlessly, and going for gold for our country, I was pregnant, and today I’m 11 weeks pregnant,” Walsh Jennings told NBC’s Matt Lauer.
The newest member of the Walsh Jennings household is due in April and will join big brothers Joey, 3, and Sundance, 2.
The 34-year-old mom with abs of steel and gun-like arms said she and her husband Casey Jennings started trying for another baby a few weeks before the Olympics, but didn’t think it would happen so quickly.
Walsh Jennings told the Today show audience that she felt “moody and touchy” while going for the gold, but she wasn’t about to let anything distract her from winning, not even a growing fetus.
So, does trying to earn a gold medal for your country by whipping your pregnant body around and diving into the sand to score points in a hotly contested beach volleyball match qualify one as a “supermom”?
For me, Walsh Jennings moves depress me more than they inspire me.
It’s like the mom who completed a marathon just hours before giving birth to a daughter. Her tale hardly motivates me to want to run 26.2 miles during my ninth month of pregnancy. Ditto for wanting to jump around, fall hard and eat sand while five weeks pregnant.
When I’m pregnant I like to sit around and eat deviled eggs while getting my feet massaged. So, does that take me out of the running for the title of “supermom”?