Two-time Olympic gold medalist Sheilla Castro has just announced her pregnancy on her personal Instagram page. She then gave an interview to Globo.com commenting on the news:
“I stopped playing in order to become a mother. My husband and I had decided that this was the moment. I am pregnant with twins and very happy. Our whole family is excited. We have already heard the babies’ heartbeats. I am doing good, everything is going well.”
Sheilla also spoke about how it was very difficult for the couple to conceive, and how they dealt with a miscarriage last year:
“I had a bleeding, but the exams showed that I still had chances of keeping the baby. At 10 weeks, I had a miscarriage. It was very sad. I had to go to the hospital to get procedures done, and was exposed to many babies in it. It’s a very sad experience having to walk by a maternity when you just had a miscarriage. But I never lost hope of getting pregnant again.”
She then spoke about how her choice to undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) was based on wanting to return to the courts as soon as possible:
“I had been away from the courts for a long time trying to conceive. After I had my miscarriage, I talked to my husband and decided that I did not want to spend yet another year trying, and that if I wasn’t pregnant by December, we would go ahead and try IVF. My doctors didn’t like the idea, as they said we had plenty of conditions to get naturally pregnant, but at the end they understood how I wanted to go back playing as soon as possible.”
In a way, Sheilla ended up answering a question that lingered in the minds of many volleyball fans: would she one day unretire. When asked this question only a few weeks ago, she was hesitant in answering, and said she had not made her mind up about it. Now, it seems that she is excited about that possibility. She is perhaps the best opposite hitter of her generation. In her decorated career, she helped Brazil’s national team to two Olympic gold medals (2008 and 2012) and seven FIVB Grand Prix titles, winning numerous personal accolades on the way. At the club level, she was always part of “super-teams”, including Italy’s Pesaro, Brazil’s Osasco and Rio de Janeiro, and Turkey’s Vakif Bank. Her return would mean a lot for Brazilian fans and for Brazil’s national team, even if for her experience and locker room presence alone.
VolleyMob wishes Sheilla a very happy and healthy pregnancy!
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