Former world tennis number one Serena Williams has revealed coach Patrick Mouratoglou told her to stop breastfeeding to improve her game.
Williams chose to nurse daughter Olympia for her first eight months, despite believing it was harming her return to peak physical form.
The 36-year-old said Mouratoglou told her she had to stop breastfeeding when she returned to training.
The 23-time Grand Slam champion told Time magazine that the advice was "hard to take from a guy".
"He's not a woman, he doesn't understand that connection, that the best time of the day for me was when I tried to feed her," she said.
"I've spent my whole life making everyone happy - just servicing, it seems like, everyone. And this is something I wanted to do.
"You have the power to sustain the life that God gave her. You have the power to make her happy, to calm her.
"At any other time in your life, you don't have this magical superpower."
Even though Williams did not want to stop breastfeeding her daughter, she acknowledged that breastfeeding was making it more difficult to train.
"I looked at Olympia and I was like, 'Listen, Mommy needs to get her body back, so Mommy's going to stop [breastfeeding] now'.
"We had a really good conversation." she joked. "We talked it out."
Newshub.
