Dame Laura Kenny reveals she’s pregnant with her third child after years of fertility woes

Dame Laura Kenny has revealed she is expecting her third child with fellow Olympian Jason Kenny after years of fertility problems.

On New Year’s Eve she shared the good news on Instagram. She posted a video of her children wearing T-shirts that read “I’m going to be a big brother to a baby.”

Laura, 32, captioned the post: ‘2024 was amazing, 2025 will be even more special.’

The sweet news comes after years of fertility issues for the couple.

Just hours before announcing her pregnancy news, the cyclist revealed her thoughts on her health, claiming elite sport may have caused her ‘out of control’ body to miscarry.

Dame Laura, Britain’s most successful female athlete, has five gold medals and a silver medal at three separate Olympic Games.

She says she gave “100 percent” to every training session and race for more than a decade, even wondering if she had worked hard enough if she didn’t throw up after a workout.

But her dedication may have affected her fertility, she has revealed.

After marrying fellow cycling phenomenon Jason in 2017 and welcoming their first child, she suffered a miscarriage in November 2021 and an ectopic pregnancy five months later.

This happens when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside the uterus (usually in one of the fallopian tubes), requiring emergency surgery.

‘Everything was a shock. I went from being so in control of my body to being so out of control,” she told Radio 4’s Today programme.

“Just drained my body and then said, ‘Well, wait a minute, there’s no way we can do this?’

While she successfully gave birth to another son, Monty, in July 2023, she started talking publicly about the loss of her baby.

Other athletes soon revealed they had experienced the same thing, raising questions about whether elite sport could have a detrimental impact on fertility.

Dr. Emma O’Donnell, an exercise physiologist at Loughborough University, said the lifestyle of a professional athlete places unique stresses on the human body.

Training at their level burns an incredible amount of calories, which often leaves athletes with very little body fat.

If they don’t eat enough food to fuel their workouts, problems with the menstrual cycle — such as periods lasting months or even years — are “very common,” Dr. O’Donnell said.

The leading idea is that having a baby is so energy intensive that the brain shuts down reproduction when it thinks there isn’t enough reserve energy available, she told the BBC.

In Britain, around one in 90 pregnancies is ectopic – the equivalent of around 11,000 per year.

Although it is still unclear why they occur, inflammation and scar tissue in the fallopian tubes can increase the risk.

Professor Geeta Nargund, consultant at St George’s Hospital and medical director of Create Fertility, said she sees no “direct link” between exercise and a higher risk of ectopic pregnancy.

However, she said there is a possible link between too much vigorous exercise in the first three months of pregnancy and miscarriage.

During a conversation with Women’s health in June, Laura opened up about how the heartbreak of her miscarriage and ectopic pregnancy completely changed her way of thinking and left her wanting a baby more than any sporting medal.

The cyclist, who announced her retirement from the sport in March, confessed she became frustrated with her body as she could push herself to incredible physical heights but still couldn’t have a baby.

She told the publication: “I can’t tell you how sad I was for a year to eighteen months. I mean, you could ask Jase how I was, I was a different person.

“I just went in because it was consuming. And all I wanted was this little baby; I didn’t want gold medals, you know, I didn’t want to go racing in the Commonwealth Games. I wanted a baby. And it just didn’t happen.’

Before the birth of her second son and a year after her ectopic pregnancy, Laura won a silver medal at the 2022 Commonwealth Games, but admitted she found no happiness in victory.

She explained: ‘I thought, why want to [my body] If you do that, it won’t do the thing I want most…

‘I felt like I was living in a yin and yang world where you could only have one.

“And when you’re an athlete who has had so much control over his body for so long, it literally felt like the rug was pulled out from under me, because suddenly I had no control over it, and there was nothing I could do. ‘

Although she added that she didn’t want to label her sadness as depression at the time, she confessed: “I’d hate to label myself, but that was the lowest I’ve ever gone: 100%. It was mentally the toughest period of my life.’

Laura also opened up about how the miscarriage affected her husband.

“Nobody asked him if he was okay or how he was feeling,” she explained.

“And so I think I totally underestimated how much I used him and how much I talked to him and never really said, ‘Jase, are you actually okay?’

“And it wasn’t until a long time after that… that he could even tell me how bad it was for him, too.”

In March, Laura explained that she made the decision to hang up her bike after struggling to spend time away from her children and the sacrifice of leaving her family at home.

Speaking about the struggle to balance both elite sport and motherhood, she admitted that it is achievable but comes with sacrifice, and that she was not 100% at her best for the Tokyo Olympics.

“It involves sacrifice. And you have to be prepared for a less than perfect build-up… I think I went to Tokyo absolutely 100% at my best? No, of course not.

“Because rest days weren’t rest days and every time I was home, I wasn’t sitting on the couch like Jase and I used to be. I was on the trampoline, I played in the sandbox… So I guess it was harder? Yes. [But] it doesn’t have to be incompatible.’

Discussing the birth of her second child, Monty, Laura said he completely changed her mindset as an athlete.

She explained: ‘I felt so privileged to be pregnant again and then bring him into the world [that] I just had a hard time leaving him.

‘I couldn’t leave him for training because why would I? All I wanted was him.’

Laura admitted she left her son Albie at home during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics due to Covid protocols and found it ‘heartbreaking’.

‘I’m not really a crier… and the only time Albie remembers Mom crying was when I had to leave him to go to the Olympics.

“And it felt like someone literally ripped my heart out and just threw it away. It was terrible. I remember messaging Jase when I was in the [Athletes’] Village, and just said, “I hope I never feel like that again.”