Kerri Walsh Jennings earns a gold medal for her incredible body after baby! The 34-year-old Olympic volleyball player showed off her naked body during and after her third pregnancy for the 2013 ESPN The Magazine Body Issue.
Though she's known for wearing skimpy swimwear on the court, Walsh Jennings admitted she was very nervous to pose nude.
"[It was] scary as hell. For the first shoot, I was very pregnant, and that wasn't as scary. I thought it would be, because I was big and rotund when I'm usually the opposite, but it was really comfortable because I felt almost like I was in costume," she told the magazine. "But for the second, I was two and a half months out from having a baby. I'm supposed to be tight and toned and strong, but I have a lot more work to do."
In a behind-the-scenes video of her photo shoot, the 6-foot-3 mother of three admitted that her weight — 158 pounds — is not where she wants it to be after welcoming daughter Scout with husband Casey Jennings in April. (Walsh Jennings was five weeks pregnant while competing in the 2012 London Summer Olympics, where she won the gold medal with teammate Misty May-Treanor.)
"I'm 15 pounds heavy. It's not even about the weight, it's just about being toned and tight and with my A game," she explained. "I'd say I'm at least a month out from being ready to be in this magazine!"
How has pregnancy affected her body? "My boobs went away; that's the saddest part," Walsh Jennings, also mom to sons Joseph, 4, and Sundance, 3, shared. "But I saw every pregnancy as a time to transform my body, because I was a clean slate."
"But having babies — literally delivering a baby — makes me feel like Wonder Woman. Everything else seems minor compared to the soul-shaking thing that is labor," she said. "I'm still a critic of my body — I'm still a woman — but I respect my body more than I have in my life. It's not perfect, but I can't tell you how proud I am of my body."
ESPN's the Body Issue hits newsstands Friday and readers can find more at www.espn.com/bodyissue.
