Having children prompts difficult career choices
One of the first things women’s 115-pound fighter Stephanie Eggink did after finding out she was pregnant was tell her sparring partners to stop hitting her in the body.
For UFC bantamweight Alexis Davis, who is due to have a baby boy in March, pregnancy also meant stepping away from the sport at a time of great potential opportunity.
One of the first things women’s 115-pound fighter Stephanie Eggink did after finding out she was pregnant was tell her sparring partners to stop hitting her in the body.
Blows to the head? Those were still fine. So were kicks to the legs. But right there in the center of her torso, Eggink had learned to her surprise, a baby was now developing. That was something the Invicta FC strawweight had to train around. But that didn’t mean she was ready to stop training entirely, she said, for several reasons.
For one, training is like an anti-depressant for me, Eggink, 27, told MMAjunkie. Even when I was nine months pregnant I was still doing strength and conditioning.
The other reason is that Eggink knew what kind of timeline she was dealing with, both as professional athlete and as a woman. Male fighters often talk about the small window of opportunity for capitalizing on their athletic primes, Eggink pointed out, but they don’t seem as worried about fitting parenthood into that equation.
For fighters, it’s a thing the men don’t have to think about or really deal with in their careers, Eggink said. Because when a woman gets to an age where she’s mostly likely to be at the height of her physical fitness, that’s also the age when it’s usually the best time to have a baby.
That often prompts some tough decisions for female fighters who want to pursue pro careers, but also want to be mothers.