EAGAN, Minnesota — Editor's Note: The video featured above originally aired in December 2022.
Paralympic medalist Mallory Weggemann is sharing her latest inspiring story with the world: becoming a mother.
In a social media post, Weggemann and husband Jay Snyder announced the birth of daughter Charlotte Ann Snyder last Thursday.
"You have completely shifted our world and filled our hearts with more love then we ever imagined possible," Weggmann wrote on Facebook. "There truly aren’t words at this moment for the love we feel - holding her in our arms after long carrying this sweet soul in our hearts is a joy unlike any other."
Weggemann, 33, grew up in the Twin Cities, where she graduated from Eagan High School and the University of Minnesota.
She became paralyzed from the waist down in 2008 after receiving a routine epidural injection in her back to treat shingles. Since then, she's gone on to win five Paralympic medals — three of them gold.
Weggemann continued to inspire during her pregnancy, competing and placing at the Swimming National Championships while six months pregnant.
"There's still so much stigma that exists within pregnancy for women and there's so much stigma that exists for women with disabilities in their journey to parenthood, in general. So I think just having that moment of sitting behind the blocks and realizing that that image is about something so much larger," Weggemann told KARE 11 in an interview last year.
Weggemann and her husband, Jay Snyder, have also been open about their journey to becoming pregnant through IVF due to male factor infertility.
"There's a lot of shame and isolation and we really wanted to try and be a voice to that. My husband has been really focal and really courageous in that journey," Weggemann said. "People naturally assume that we went through infertility because I am a woman with a disability, more specifically a woman with a disability that brings with it a wheelchair. And that visual, they just make the assumption that that's the reason why we're seeking infertility treatment which isn't the case."
Weggemann will likely be back in a pool soon; she hopes to defend her title in the 2024 Summer Paralympic Games in Paris.
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