Dame Valerie Adams: Parenting takes a gold medal effort

For 23 years of my life, I was focussed solely on training. Train, train, train, train, train. When I wasn’t training, I was thinking about training. I would go to sleep and run over the last tactical session in my head. Training was my whole world.

And then I became a parent.

Being an athlete is hard, but being a mum is even harder. And I think it’s so important to talk about this, and to be open about it, because it’s our collective mental health we’re talking about.

I don’t think anyone knows what they’re getting into until they have kids. And I don’t think women get enough recognition for pregnancy: physically growing a human, your body as an incubator, trying to oven-cook this baby until it’s ready to come out. That’s a lot of work! It’s a huge effort. We really need to appreciate the lengths women go to, and the changes that happen to their bodies.

And it doesn’t end with the birth. Some women suffer from post-natal depression, and they keep it all inside. These are the things partners and the outside world often can’t see. The late nights. Night after night. Looking after a sleepless baby. It’s tough. Doable, but tough.

And about that toughness: I've been dealt a lot in my life. A lot. I've lost both my parents. I went through a divorce (a pretty ugly one). Had my son premature. And now he's been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. It’s been incredibly difficult, but it’s also brought our family together.

It’s easy to think that life ends when you have children. As a woman, you think: this is my job, this is all I’m going to do now, stay home and look after the kids. But I’ve found having a career after children is 100% possible. You just have to believe in yourself and continue living your dream. Whatever that might be. For me, I wanted to continue being an athlete after I had my first baby, and I was lucky enough to compete at the Commonwealth Games six months after having Kimoana through the sunroof (for those who don't know, that’s when you have a C-Section, take the baby out and then…well, that's the sunroof.)

Coming back and competing at the Commonwealth Games was quite extraordinary, but also very difficult. Difficult mentally and physically. For me, being a mother has given my life some balance. At the end of the day, you’re in charge of your destiny, and for making sure you’re happy at the end of it. Life’s too short to give up your God-given talents, or your personal ambitions, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

Because that’s the other thing about parenthood—you get a lot of advice. And not all of it is welcome. I’ve found that people who have older kids, they’ll look at Kimoana and say, “Oh, she’s going to be a tough one.” Little comments like that make you double-take and think, ‘Oh, am I doing something wrong?’ There’s a lot of pressure on mums and dads to be perfect.

But I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re going to have good days and bad days, no matter what. And there’s always something you’ll be doing that someone, somewhere, will disagree with. You really just need to back yourself and lean on your support network – your partner, your family, your husband, whatever. Make sure you’re all on the same page, because the gig is hard enough.

And this goes both ways. If you see a parenting style you don’t agree with, that’s all good. That’s just their way of doing things. Whatever it is, parents need to lift each other up, not put each other down. You don’t know what’s going on in someone else’s life, and you don’t get to see behind the scenes. All you see is the public front, and that doesn’t necessarily reflect what’s going on inside.