WWE star Leah Van Dale on expecting her rainbow baby: 'I'm so grateful that my body is capable of doing the things that it's doing'
Welcome to So Mini Ways, Yahoo Life's parenting series on the joys and challenges of childrearing.
With new motherhood on the horizon, Leah Van Dale is a strong believer that after every storm comes a rainbow. It’s an expression the WWE star included in her May 1 pregnancy announcement on Instagram, writing, “Our little miracle is due this November, and we couldn’t be more thrilled.”
The storm for Van Dale, who goes by Carmella on stage, involved going through a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy last fall and a pregnancy loss, related to a chemical pregnancy, before that.
“I had a positive pregnancy test, and then, really light tests," she tells Yahoo. "I got my period, the whole thing, and I was like, ‘OK, great. I lost another baby.’ But I came to find out it was all part of the ectopic pregnancy.”
A major takeaway for her was that “it’s so important for women to know and listen to their bodies and to know when something isn’t right.”
Her losses also inspired her to speak out about miscarriage on social media. “I needed to share it because I felt like I was a different person after two losses,” says Van Dale. “And I felt like, if I was going through it, then there have to be other women out there that are suffering in silence.”
In turn, many people came out of the woodwork, including people in her social circle, to thank her for speaking up. “I'm not saying you have to share your story, but I think the more we talk about these things, and the more open we are about them, the less shame and the less guilt we will have,” says Van Dale.
Following her ectopic pregnancy, Van Dale was told by her doctors to take a break from trying to conceive. And that proved to be surprisingly liberating, she notes. “That is what kind of allowed me to sort of free my brain from the fog of trying to get pregnant or thinking about getting pregnant,” she says. “It was a blessing in disguise to be able to just kind of live my life. I went back to work. I was just like, ‘Let me live my life.’”
And that’s when she got pregnant.
Van Dale says she felt sick, sleepless and low on energy throughout her first trimester. “I remember thinking, Why does nobody talk about how awful the first few months of pregnancy are?” she recalls. And because she wasn’t talking about the fact that she was expecting just yet, she felt a bit isolated. “Some people do choose to share their pregnancy early, which is great, and I wish that I had had the courage to do that, because that would have been great to have a bigger community of women to engage with and talk to about these things,” she remembers. “So you're just miserable and feel like you're the only person in the world that this is happening to.”
Now, she’s grateful to be in what she describes as “the honeymoon phase” of her pregnancy. “I feel amazing, I feel like I feel like myself, and I never thought it would feel this good,” she says.
In fact, last month, at six months pregnant, Van Dale walked the runway at Miami Swim Week. It was a move she felt compelled to do in order to prove that an expectant mom can still be herself.
“With being pregnant, there's [this mindset that] you have to cover up, you have to sit at home, be careful, don't do anything, don't go to the gym, don't work out, you can't do this again,” she says. “[But] I have a chiropractor, a pelvic floor therapist and my midwife, and they're like, ‘No, you do keep doing everything. Do Pilates, go to the gym, go run.’ Life does not stop. We don't have to stop being who we are.”
For years Van Dale's “biggest concern” about motherhood was having to change who she is. “Before even considering getting pregnant, I was like, ‘I don't want to slow down. I like to dress sexy. I like being me, doing my own thing,’ and that was my mindset for years,” she recalls, adding that she realizes now she can do those things and be a mom-to-be. “I’d love to get back in the ring, and I am gonna rock a bikini on the runway. It’s important for women to embrace who they are. I hope that I can encourage at least one other woman to be like, I'm gonna do that. Why not? Who cares what other people think?”
Van Dale’s similarly passionate about being preemptive with her mental health ahead of giving birth. “I'm a big advocate for therapy, and I want to get into therapy prior [to giving birth],” she shares. “I would like to see someone and just be able to make sure everything's good and that I feel good mentally and physically.”
Although Van Dale is sometimes surprised by the changes her body is going through (“There are days when I look in the mirror, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I can't even see my feet. This is weird!"), the professional wrestler is doing her best to practice gratitude. “Every morning, I wake up and I'm like, I'm so grateful that my body is capable of doing the things that it's doing,” says Van Dale. “Even with the miscarriages, I never got frustrated with my body or upset, because I felt like, Well, something's not clicking. And I feel grateful that it is now. [My body] is growing a baby, and I feel so blessed for that.”
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