“My team has joked a few times that my water might just break on stage,” said archer Jodie Grinham, who will compete for Great Britain in the Paralympic Games this month. “That would be quite something.”
Grinham, in conversation with The Athletics via video call from her training camp in St-Germain-en-Laye, west of Paris, will be seven months pregnant when she shoots her first arrow in the compound archery competition in Les Invalides on Thursday. She believes she will be the first Paralympian to compete at such a late stage of pregnancy.
“I will have accomplished something that no one else can say I accomplished,” Grinham says. “I (must have) been to a Paralympic Games when I was seven months pregnant and was allowed to participate.
“(But) I don’t do it for an explanation, I do it for myself. If that’s enough to make people say, ‘Why can’t we do that?’ then that’s fantastic.”
Grinham is already a mother to Christian, born in October 2022, and has juggled caring for her toddler with training at home and dealing with the side effects of pregnancy. The 31-year-old has adjusted her training and technique in a bid to return to the podium after winning a silver medal alongside John Stubbs at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in the mixed team compound, a category for athletes with “lower levels of upper or lower limb impairment,” according to the British Paralympic Association.
Grinham has “no fingers and half a thumb” and explains “my arms are different lengths, my shoulder is undeveloped through my left side which extends to my left core and left hip” due to a congenital condition, brachysyndactyly. She and her partner Christopher have also had three miscarriages, and she knows all too well the precarious and costly nature of pregnancy.
“We decided we weren’t going to let the Games stop us from expanding our family,” says Grinham. “We didn’t know if we would even be able to conceive a child. For us, this may never happen. Getting pregnant is not as easy as people think. It’s not that simple.”
When she was 28 weeks pregnant with her son Christian, Grinham went into premature labor.
“I was very ill and deteriorating throughout my pregnancy,” she says. “I was on bed rest when I was 16 weeks pregnant. After Christian was born, he ended up in an incubator with severe jaundice and almost needed a blood transfusion. I couldn’t really hold him for the first ten days, he was under a little light in this little box, which was heartbreaking.
This time, doctors were unsure whether Grinham’s left side could support the weight of her baby and believed that part of the problem in achieving a full-term pregnancy was due to the tendency of her left side to collapse. to deposit. “This time we are in the same situation,” she says. “We don’t know.”
It’s a very real possibility that the Archer will give birth in Paris, so Grinham and her team researched the nearest maternity wards and hospitals, what happens if the baby is born in France and the logistics surrounding birth certificates.
“We have every backup plan you can think of,” she says, musing about the possibility of having the baby and returning to compete in the Paralympics in the individual event. “We’ll see,” she smiles.
However, Grinham’s look is as bright as her pink hair.
Grinham talks to The Athletics Charlotte Harpur
“After we sadly lost our last one at the beginning of this year, my partner said, ‘You’ve always wanted to do it, just do it,’” she says of her fuchsia locks.
“I was aware that I might not even go to these Games if I had the same problems as during my last pregnancy. I’ve decided that I want a family and a career, I want to be able to do both.
“If that doesn’t happen medically, then it doesn’t happen. I have the luxury of going for Los Angeles (2028 Olympics) and Brisbane (2032). I may never get the chance to have a child again. I’m not going to regret a single kick or a single bad arrow. I will be here and be the happy athlete mom I know I deserve.”
More about the sports summer in Paris…
“I’m a lot more front-heavy with the baby, so my balance is a little off with the swinging,” said Grinham, who had to change her shooting technique. “It was the weirdest workout I’ve ever done in my life. But it’s been fun.”
Adjustments have also been made to her arch’s stabilizers (weights placed on the arch to make it more stable) to help the Paralympian feel strong and grounded through her feet. She is grateful for the ‘out-of-the-box thinking’ of coach Charlotte Burgess, a mother and former Olympic archer, the British Paralympic Association and Archery GB for their support.
Grinham has to wear larger clothing to cover her stomach, but there is excess material left near her shoulders that can get caught in the string. She now puts a protector under her armpit to catch any loose material. She has shifted the strap for her quiver (the container containing the arrows) to a lower position, which affects the way she lifts the bow and holds it on her side, and has used video analysis to make sure nothing is interfering with her shot .
Grinham and John Stubbs battle in Rio (Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images)
However, as her pregnancy progresses, her training continues to change. Last week, Grinham noticed the baby’s position moving lower in the pelvis, causing discomfort as the quiver also pulled. Lying on her back on the physio bed, Grinham can tilt her pelvis to gently encourage the baby to move so it’s not so low – but she can’t do this during a competition.
“If it works: great. If that’s not the case, I just carry on,” she says matter-of-factly.
Grinham and Burgess have also created “pregnancy prep sessions.” For example, during training, when Grinham is in the full pull position (ready to shoot), her coach encourages a light movement to act as a baby kick or tickles her side to simulate a fluttering sensation.
But as Grinham looks at the 30-inch target from 50 yards away, under the most intense pressure, with one crucial shot that could be the difference between medals or not, her baby might decide to join in.
“I felt a really good kick right before I started shooting and I just thought, ‘It’s okay, Mom knows you’re there,’” she says. “I’m not irritated or angry. They don’t know what’s going on.
“I have made this decision. If I go to the Games and I’m in the gold final and the baby kicks me and I lose gold, what then? What did I expect? I knew the risks.”
Grinham doesn’t experience the “terrible” desires she had when she was pregnant with her son, but her sense of smell has been heightened. Even the faintest smell makes her nauseous. Her body also has little need for snacks and often, as opposed to three meals a day, she will have to work harder to control heat and hydration, and the baby’s pressure on her bladder will cause her to go to the toilet more often must.
Grinham’s team of midwives and consultants have advised her from the pregnancy perspective and her sports medicine team from the athlete’s perspective, but as in many sports there are no pregnancy specialists for athletes. She remembers how doctors advised her not to train while carrying Christian, but that her sports medicine team would know better. However, her sports team was concerned that they would put pressure on her if the doctor advised her against training. It was very difficult for Grinham to make the right decision.
“It would always be good to have a specialist who knows both,” she says. “But we’ve never needed them until now. It is only recently that athletes have been accepted as pregnant women or also as mothers. I hope that more pregnant women will see that they can continue to train and participate.”
Grinham’s partner Christopher – in her words “the most understanding man in the world” – and her son Christian will not be in Paris, but will watch from home, a decision made only a few weeks ago. Although they did test runs with Christian watching his mother compete during winter home games, it has become more difficult as the toddler expresses himself more.
“He doesn’t really understand that if he sees mommy, he can’t have mommy,” Grinham says. “He gets really upset. You can’t explain to a one-year-old that you can’t see mom because she’s at work. I can’t sit in the middle of the shooting and comfort him.
“It’s difficult. I am programmed to listen to a baby’s cry. I have my athlete hat on, but I’m also a mother. It’s very hard to keep my mind off that. Right now it’s just easier to be in athlete mode here.”
Knowing that Christian is home and that she can video call her family whenever she needs, Grinham is completely focused on the job at hand.
“I believe I can medal, except for the pregnancy,” she says. “I’m shooting the best I’ve ever shot. I feel more experienced than ever before. I want a medal.
“If I were to participate and have a happy, healthy baby in November, that would be success enough. I will have achieved what I wanted with these Games and the pregnancy. I’m here, I get to have fun and at the end I get a prize, whether it’s a medal, but I get to have a baby, and that’s what I want.
(Top photo: Grinham in October 2016. Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)