Before becoming pregnant, Rodriguez had intended to wait to start a family until she’d finished her professional career. Now, she’d be attempting to follow the lead of the athlete-mothers who came before her. In 2015, there are more and more examples of female athletes who not only continue to compete after becoming mothers, but who also perform better after having children. Of course, that’s not how the story unfolds for everyone. “I’d seen teammates come back really strong,” says Rodriguez. “But for others, it was a lot more difficult—they had a rockier road.” Athlete moms are up against more than the physical challenge of mounting a comeback. In the fledgling National Women’s Soccer League, where players make as little as $6,800 a year, they face sacrifice, instability, and uncertainty—circumstances that become much more difficult to navigate when you’re no longer thinking only of yourself.

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In 1894, three years after giving birth to her son, Blanche Hillyard became the first of four mothers ever to win Wimbledon. In the 1948 London Olympics, the Dutch sprinter and mother of two Fanny Blankers-Koen won four gold medals—more than any other athlete at the games that year. In 1996, in the first year of the WNBA, the women’s professional basketball league, Sheryl Swoopes, the number-one draft pick, announced her pregnancy—she missed the first two-thirds of the seasons but made it back onto the court six weeks after giving birth, leading the Comets to a Championship. Many WNBA players have followed her example—Tina Thompson, Lisa Leslie, Candace Parker all became mothers and continued to star in the league. In 2010, there were five mothers on the Los Angeles Sparks alone.

In the women’s soccer world, in 1994, Joy Fawcett became the first player to have kids mid-career. She’d go on to play for another decade—she was the only competitor to play all minutes of the 1995, 1999, and 2003 Women’s World Cups. She also played in the U.S.’s first attempt at a women’s pro league, Woman’s United Soccer Association, which grew out of the success of the 1999 World Cup. Playing for the San Diego Spirit, Fawcett was back on the field six weeks after giving birth to her third child. She breastfed her daughter at half time.

Her teammates reported that she came back from every pregnancy faster and stronger. Her U.S. teammate Julie Foudy told ESPN, “In the past, all those years before Joy, players would say, ‘I'm going to retire because I want to have kids; I have to quit because it’s time to start a family.’ But Joy said, ‘Wait, why do I have to retire, why don’t I just keep playing and I'll pop ‘em out in between World Cups and Olympics?’” Other mid-career soccer moms followed—Carla Overbeck, Kate Markgraf, Danielle Fotopoulos, Tina Ellertson.

The current national-team player Christie Rampone is Fawcett’s successor as team super-mom. Rampone has two daughters, nine-year-old Reece and five-year-old Rylie. She’ll turn 40 this month—the oldest player in Women’s World Cup history—and is still one of the fastest and fittest on the team. Professionally, she’s played in all three iterations of the women’s pro league in the U.S. She was three months pregnant with Rylie when she won the 2009 championship of the Women’s Professional Soccer league. “I always joke with Christie that she made it all look so easy,” says Rodriguez. “I had no idea how hard it was.”