Hope Solo, a former soccer goalkeeper who won accolades as a World Cup champion and who was also a two-time Olympic gold medalist, is about to add another important title to her resume — mom.
The talented athlete just shared that she’s pregnant with twins, an announcement she made on the beIN SPORTS Weekend Winners show. She went on to retweet videos of the special announcement on her Twitter feed, accompanied by a string of mom, baby and exclamation point emojis:
👧🏽👶🏽 ‼️ https://t.co/qdGG7yaOss
— Hope Solo (@hopesolo) December 17, 2019
In the video, Solo confirms that she’s having twins — a boy and a girl. She explains that this will give her a chance to practice equality from the very beginning, which is something very near and dear to the gender equality champion’s heart. In 2016, Solo filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to protest the vast salary discrepancy on the women’s Olympic soccer team versus the men’s Olympic soccer team, even though doing so caused her great professional and personal stress.
The news of her pregnancy is doubly joyful, as Solo recently suffered a miscarriage. In a heartwrenching interview with Elle earlier this year, Solo explained that she and her husband, former NFL player Jerramy Stevens, had been trying to start a family for a while.
She was overjoyed when she became pregnant, but a miscarriage followed soon after.
And that was only the beginning.
A week after the miscarriage, Solo continued to be in pain. It turned out she had been pregnant with twins, and one was an ectopic pregnancy, which means the fertilized egg had implanted somewhere other than the uterus.
“The doctor said I was hours from dying,” she told Elle. “They ended up having to remove my fallopian tube.”
With the help of IVF, Solo was able to become pregnant once again and, as she happily shared with her fans, it’s twins once again. After a difficult few years, this pregnancy is no doubt a joyful new chapter for Solo and husband Stevens (the pair wed in November 2012).
Congratulations to the happy parents-to-be!