Lisa Vedernikova Khanna is a Democratic candidate for Congress in Virginia’s First District. This essay marks the first public announcement of her pregnancy.
Days after I launched my campaign for Congress, I found out I was pregnant.
We had been trying for a few months, but I still wasn’t expecting it. I’d taken a test the week before and gotten a negative result. But here I was, a few days later, with two lines on a pregnancy test staring back at me. My husband and I were thrilled, and I was especially excited to share the news with my mom. When I called earlier in the spring to tell her I was running, she admitted she half-expected I’d say I was pregnant. I couldn’t wait to tell her that her hunch wasn’t too far off.
The next week, on my way to meet with a voter, a wave of nausea washed over me and wiped every talking point from my mind. It dawned on me that this was what the next nine months would be: building a campaign and a human at the same time.
It didn’t take long for the questions to creep in: Do I tell people now, or wait until I’m showing? Will voters see this as a strength or a liability? Would my opponents use it against me? In politics, nothing stays private for long. Every joy, every heartbreak, every decision is out in the open for the public to see. At home, my husband and I spent the evenings trying to work through the logistics: how we’d handle health insurance, child care, and parental leave. The same kitchen-table issues I’d heard from voters had suddenly landed on my own.
When politics punishes women for being mothers, everyone pays for it.
Lisa Vedernikova Khanna with her husband, Harry, and their dog, Mishka
These worries extend far beyond my own home and district. They belong to millions of women across the country who go to work pregnant, raise kids without affordable child care, and spend late nights searching for a doctor who takes their insurance. A recent University of Kansas study found that in early 2025, mothers of young children saw the steepest drop in labor-force participation in more than forty years. We are the only wealthy nation without national paid leave, and we lead the developed world in maternal deaths. These aren’t “women’s issues.” They’re the foundation of a functional economy, and the U.S. continues to fall short.
When child care collapses, parents are pushed out of the workforce. When prenatal care is far away or unaffordable, complications rise, and so do costs. When less than a third of U.S. workers have paid family leave, babies and parents suffer, and employers lose talent. When politics punishes women for being mothers, everyone pays for it. The solutions aren’t complicated: Guarantee paid family leave so no one has to choose between a paycheck and caring for a newborn. Protect rural hospitals and expand maternal care. Strengthen Medicaid, which already covers 40 percent of U.S. births. Cap child care costs, pay early educators fairly, and support modern maternal care through telehealth, doulas, and midwives.
We don’t lack these basics because they’re hard. We lack them because too few lawmakers know what it’s like to live without them. I do.
The solutions aren’t complicated: Guarantee paid family leave so no one has to choose between a paycheck and caring for a newborn.
Lisa Vedernikova Khanna at the General Assembly Building in Richmond, Virginia, where she served as a presidential elector.
My mom came to America from Soviet Russia before the fall of the Soviet Union, searching for freedom, fairness, and opportunity. She raised me on her own, working as a housekeeper and nanny to keep us afloat, and was undocumented for years before finally receiving her green card two years ago. I grew up watching her stretch every dollar and do whatever it took to make ends meet. From an early age, I worked right alongside her, cleaning houses, juggling odd jobs, and learning what hard work really means. We faced eviction and bankruptcy, but programs like Medicaid, free school lunch, and Pell Grants opened countless doors for me.
Those programs made it possible for me to attend public school, learn English, and eventually build a career, from working at the New York Times to the DNC to Instacart. I’ve lived the promise of the American Dream, but I’ve also watched those same opportunities slip away for too many families. That’s why I decided to run: to make sure that safety net is stronger, not smaller, and to give other families the same shot at stability and opportunity my mom fought to give me.
I’ve lived the promise of the American Dream, but I’ve also watched those same opportunities slip away for too many families.
Lisa Vedernikova Khanna with her mother, Masha Vedernikova.
Once the campaign was in full swing, I realized just how much those first few months had taken out of me. Running for office is isolating enough on its own—long days on the road, back-to-back events, rooms full of people that can still feel lonely. Doing it while pregnant added a different kind of weight, both literal and emotional. There’s no handbook for that, no group chat of pregnant candidates trading tips on debate prep or compression socks. Fewer than fifteen women in American history have ever given birth while serving in Congress. I’m grateful for the women who’ve broken that ground, but there still aren’t many examples of what it looks like to campaign while becoming a mom for the first time.
Ultimately, running while pregnant hasn’t been a setback. If anything, it clarified my purpose and reminded me why I chose to do this. People will make their own judgments about my timeline, my body, my choices. I can’t control the optics, but I can control what I do with this experience. And for me, that means leading with the fact that I’m running for office while carrying a baby, not hiding from it.
So, I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep making the case that when we build a country that works for families, it works for everyone. That’s the campaign. That’s the work. That’s the future I want to give my child.