Leave it to soccer star Sydney Leroux Dwyer to kick back at her pregnancy-shamers.
The U.S. women’s national team forward — who is expecting her first child, a baby boy, in September — shared a photo on July 5 that showed her and her soccer player husband, Dom Dwyer, tubing on a lake. Within minutes, the trolls came out in full force. “You don’t tube while you’re pregnant,” wrote one commenter, while another chimed in: “You gonna kill that baby.”
But the 26-year-old Olympic gold medalist — who earned the award at the 2012 London games — was having none of it.
“It’s unfortunate that I have to say something but after a number of comments like: ‘you’re going to give birth to a dead fetus’ or ‘you just killed your baby’ I have to remind you that this is MY body,” the mom-to-be wrote in an Instagram post later that day. “MY body is the one that is creating this life … So if I want to jump in a pool, go on a tube and slowly ride around with my husband, dance like an idiot or work out, I am absolutely going to.”
The post received more than 85,000 likes and more than 3,000 comments.
Two weeks later, Leroux Instagrammed a 3D ultrasound of her adorable (and unscathed!) son. “I shall call him, Squishy,” she captioned the image. “#lipsfordays.”
In May, Leroux revealed that she shared her baby news with Dwyer over FaceTime. “I was like ‘I’m going to take a pregnancy test,” Leroux told ESPN. “So I take the pregnancy test … and I put it on the counter. I look and it says ‘pregnant.’ I think I said, ‘Oh my God.’ And I flipped the FaceTime screen and so all he sees, as well, is ‘pregnant.’”
The athlete is sitting out the Rio games because of her pregnancy.
Leroux and Dwyer — who is Sporting Kansas City’s leading goal scorer — tied the knot in October 2015.