What If You Got Pregnant While Training for the Olympics?
At the Olympic track & field stadium on Tuesday during the women's 1,500-meter finals, there will be one face missing from the starting line: Sarah Brown. The 29-year-old New Balance athlete didn't qualify for Team USA at the Olympic trials back in July, despite being a strong contender throughout all of 2015 and running a personal best of 4:03.20 in the 1,500 in May-a time that's faster than all the current Olympic finalists ran in Rio.
Still, despite not qualifying for the Olympic team, the elite runner's journey has captured the attention of the masses and inspired an espnW documentary series ever since Brown announced her pregnancy in a blog post in September and declared that (with her doctor's blessing) she still fully intended to train for the 2016 Olympics, baby on board and all.
Brown revealed that her pregnancy was unexpected because she had an IUD (only 0.2% of women have unplanned pregnancies in their first year using an IUD, vs. 9% of women who have unplanned pregnancies in their first year using birth control pills). Suddenly, she found herself facing the challenge of pregnancy at a time in her life when she thought she'd be totally, 100% focused on her Olympic dream, but she set her sights on both achieving her career goals and having her child. (Abigail, her daughter with her husband and coach Darren Brown, was born March 4, just four months before the July 7 Olympic trials.)
Here, Brown opens up to ELLE.com about the challenge of training during pregnancy, facing criticism, and what she hopes to one day tell her daughter about her story.
On finding out she was pregnant:
"The whole reason I went and got all the tests done, and thus found out I was pregnant, was because I started running so poorly. I was at top of my game and then, all the sudden, it was like I fell off a cliff. I felt so fatigued in my races, like I felt like I was running through sand. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. By the time I found out I was pregnant, it was a lot of mixed emotions. It was relief because at least I knew why I was feeling like that. I was scared just because I had an IUD so I didn't understand how that was even possible. Then, there was a part of me that was excited because this is my first child and my husband and I did plan on having kids at some point, it just happened a bit earlier than we were expecting!"
On why she decided to document her pregnancy on social media and her blog:
"As a professional athlete I've always had to be very selfish with my time, and I've always wondered how people would balance it with motherhood. I thought: Which kind of goals do you pursue? Do I keep pursuing my running career, or do I stop running and have a family? Could you actually have both? I think it was something that I started to wrestle with and so this was an opportunity for me to share what it might look like for somebody, just because I knew it was something I would have been curious about. It was my opportunity to share a little bit about what it would be like going through so many changes."
On critics who called her "selfish" for pursuing her athletic goals while pregnant:
"I tried to avoid it. There's a great support group that's close to me and I think that that helped. Whenever you're receiving a lot of outside criticism, the comments usually aren't coming from any background of knowledge or understanding. It was just constant attacks. They're very ignorant. I think the hardest comments for me was anytime someone would start attacking the relationship between me and my daughter, before I had even gotten to that point. I've never been a mom, I didn't understand that relationship of what it feels to be a mother, and so I was vulnerable to that. Now that she's here, I have an understanding that no one can break that bond, and no one is going to make me feel inadequate as a mother."
I thought: Which kind of goals do you pursue? Do I keep pursuing my running career, or do I stop running and have a family? Could you actually have both?
On why she continued to do exercise seven days a week:
"Even if I wouldn't have been ready enough to compete in the Olympic trials, I wanted to keep being physically active throughout my pregnancy-that's so much a part of my daily routine that if you were to tell me to sit on a couch that would be such a far cry from what I was used to. My body would probably go into shock. I think just mentally, I'm healthier when I exercise, I feel better, I'm a better human when I'm working out. So for me, exercise was something that helped me enjoy my pregnancy. You can continue doing the things you enjoy doing that make you who you are so you don't lose yourself during [pregnancy].
On adjusting to training directly after giving birth:
"I was actually surprised at how good I felt after she was born. After about a week, I just started getting the itch to do something. So, that's when we brought in the cross-training and I started doing some pelvic floor strengthening exercises that started preparing my body to run. And then, two weeks postpartum was my first run not pregnant. It was awkward. I ran four miles that day, and I felt like my stride was still running like a pregnant person. Once we started mixing it up, and things started coming back. I felt a little bit smoother, a little less choppy, but I'm not going to lie, I felt like the tin man a little bit the first time."
On facing doubt that she'd even make it to trials:
"I definitely knew we didn't have a lot of time. When things started going wrong with multiple injuries, there were so many moments when Istarted thinking that I wouldn't even make it to the line at the trial. You get news from the doctor and it's kind of a punch in the face. You think there's no way I'm going to be able to do this. It was baby steps, and I joked with my husband that I felt like azombie, like people could cut off a limb and I would still be like "I need to keep going forward!" So it really just became about progressing forward even though some days that was only an inch."
People could cut off a limb and I would still be like "I need to keep going forward!"
On her daughter Abigail, now five months old:
"I think I would just let her know how much she motivates me to be better every day. She keeps me going, she keeps me in the moment. As an athlete I can be a bit Type A, like 'Oh, I need to do this, this, this, and I have to get this done,' and I have a hard time relaxing because I'm always focusing on all the things I need to get done. But Abigail kind of pulls me back and keeps me in the moment and really allows me to enjoy just those five minutes in the morning when I'm just talking to her and she's smiling at me. She's just changed me so much for the better as a person. I can't wait to keep watching her grow and see what she's going to accomplish. All these people ask me like 'Oh, is she going to be a runner, because you guys are runners? Are you going to put her in running?' My biggest hope for her is that she finds something that she's as passionate about as I am towards running-that's what I love to do. I hope she finds something that she loves just as much."
