Model Katrina Scott: I'm the first visibly pregnant person in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue. That bump is my 5th pregnancy but only my 2nd child.

• Katrina Scott is the first visibly pregnant model in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue.
• She had two miscarriages and a chemical pregnancy in the year before the issue.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Katrina Scott. It has been edited for length and clarity.

These days, most moms-to-be do a maternity shoot. But not many of them have their maternity photos run in an iconic magazine. This week, I became the first visibly pregnant person to be published in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

When the magazine's editor reached out to ask me about posing this year, I politely declined. "I'm pregnant," I told her. But then she insisted that's why she wanted me. I instantly said yes. At nearly seven months pregnant, I was in St. Croix with the SI team.

I am proud to be this pregnant. I worked hard to be this pregnant, even walking the runway in Miami last year for SI while I was going through IVF.

Women have been having babies since the beginning of time. It's a beautiful chapter in our lives, and it should be celebrated. I'm so glad that I'm part of the media that's catching up with that.

I struggled with secondary infertility

Two years ago, I couldn't have imagined I'd be pregnant in SI.

My husband, Brian, and I married when we were 19 and 20. Now I'm 38. We focused on growing a business together before we decided to grow a family. But when we were ready, I got pregnant with my daughter, Isabelle, right away. She's 3 1/2 now.

When we went to give Isabelle a sibling, things got difficult. We became part of the one in eight couples who experience secondary infertility, an inability to conceive after having a biological child.

I spent half of 2020 pregnant, but I didn't end that year or the next with a baby to hold. I had two miscarriages and a chemical pregnancy. I was lucky to have access to the care and assisted reproduction I needed to keep a pregnancy with my second daughter, who is due any day now.

The baby that I'm pregnant with in the swimsuit issue is my fifth pregnancy but only the second child I'll hold in my arms.

Bouncing forward, not bouncing back

When I was pregnant with Isabelle, people told me I would bounce right back. They assured me that I'd be one of those pregnant people that was "all bump."

But I feel my pregnancies everywhere. Right now I feel pregnant from my ankles to my face and everywhere in between.

Yet I refuse to pressure myself to bounce back. After Isabelle, I didn't touch a cardio machine for six months. Women are cleared for exercise and sex six weeks after giving birth, but those both seem crazy to me. Your body goes through hundreds of physiological changes before, during, and after pregnancy.

I never want any woman to feel that she has to look the same after as she did before. I'm all about bouncing forward, not bouncing back.

Katrina Scott is the cofounder of Tone It Up. Follow her on her blog, Live Beautifully, or on Instagram.