How REDs Recovery Quietly Prepared Me for Motherhood

Tags: Read time: 6mins

by Pippa Woolven, Project REDs Founder

Everyone warns you how much motherhood will challenge you, change you, break you, and make you all at once. People happily dish out advice about feeding, sleeping, prams, and pacifiers, but the emotional, physical, and psychological shift of becoming a mother? No one can brief you for that.

That said, it dawned on me recently that the years I spent recovering from REDs - a chapter I once wished I could erase - quietly trained me for this one.

We spend a lot of time talking about the pain and difficulty that comes with REDs, and rightly so. It can be brutal. But looking back, it handed me a subtle set of tools I’ve been able to use in pregnancy, postpartum, and early motherhood. So, I found myself reflecting on something we don’t always acknowledge - the unexpected strengths and skills that can emerge from the recovery journey.

Here’s what I mean.

Learning to let go

REDs and control often sit side by side. Food, training plans, metrics, routines. Recovery is a slow surrender of that control. A trusting of the unknown and a feel the fear and do it anyway experience.

Then motherhood arrives and takes whatever illusion of control remains and laughs in its face!"

Babies don’t care about plans or perfection. They arrive when they arrive. They sleep when they sleep. Meals go cold. Days unfold how they unfold. Recovering from REDs taught me that when I let go, I suffered less. Flexibility wasn’t failure. It was relief! It created space for joy I would have missed if I was still clinging on. I'm still practising this skill, but I'm realising the secret to surviving early motherhood isn’t better planning – it’s lowering the bar and learning to laugh when the wheels fall off.

Getting comfortable with being uncomfortable

Recovering from REDs was tough in a way elite sport never was for me. It required doing the opposite of what my old identity would have chosen. Resting when I wanted to train. Eating more when my ingrained programming shouted “less”. Sitting with feelings instead of outrunning them. Recovery teaches you to stay in discomfort long enough for it to lose its power.

Early motherhood felt similar. There were challenges I simply couldn’t fix with grit or determination. The night feeds and broken sleep that felt never-ending. The crying I couldn’t soothe. The identity shift I couldn’t rush. I couldn’t hack my way out of it. I had to move through it. But because I had already learned that discomfort isn’t danger, just a phase, motherhood felt less like I was failing and more like I was expanding.

I realised I didn’t have to escape hard moments. I just had to remember that these too shall pass. Every hour felt like a fresh start - and that is a powerful skill to carry into motherhood.

A body that changes and a mind can handle it

Pregnancy changes your body. Postpartum changes it again. Society comments on it always.

During this time, your body transforms in ways you can’t anticipate, but if you’ve recovered from REDs, you’ve already lived through a version of this. You’ve likely practised detaching your worth from your size, shape, or physical performance.

You’ve learned that your body is more than what it looks like; it’s what it does for you."

That prepares you more than you realise. Pregnancy and motherhood never felt like a betrayal of my body. They felt like a continuation of a relationship I had rebuilt and a celebration of what my body allowed me to do.

Learning to listen and nourish

As an athlete, I treated my body like a machine to control, not a home to care for. Recovery taught me to tune back in: listen to hunger, rest when I needed it, drop the “push through at all costs” mentality, and eat enough without guilt.

Motherhood reinforced that instantly. You can’t push through pregnancy or exhaustion like a training session. Listening to your body is a survival skill. Rest becomes essential, food becomes non-negotiable. You can’t grow or care for a baby on willpower and lettuce.

And postpartum? With sleep deprivation and a baby attached to me, I ate whatever was easiest. Sometimes meals resemble my Year 9 school packed lunch – a sandwich, crisps, and a Penguin. Not aesthetic, not instagrammable, but eaten. And that’s enough. I look after me, so I can look after them.

Playing the long game

Both recovery and motherhood involve a huge amount of effort with absolutely zero immediate payoff.

In REDs recovery, you can eat all the extra snacks and still wait months for your period to return.

In motherhood, you can spend an hour making veg-packed falafels, only to watch your toddler toss them to the dog. No applause. No gold star. But in both cases, the magic shows up eventually. Nourish the body (or the child) and the results come, just not on your timeline. And yes, it’s still worth it IMO!

Redefining Identity Beyond Achievement

As an athlete my self-worth hinged upon my splits, my self-discipline, and how “in control” I was over my nutrition and training. Recovery blew that wide open, and taught me how identity isn’t fixed through achievement. And, because I’d already practised the art of self-compassion and other such important things that weren’t in my orbit as an athlete, when it came to motherhood, I was prepared (as prepared as one can be...).

Sometimes I think if I hadn’t already dismantled my old beliefs about productivity and achievement, motherhood would have flattened me".

Asking for help

REDs recovery is rarely a solo journey. At some point, you have to admit you need support. REDs recovery helped me see how essential it is to go through the highs and lows with others - people who “get it” and can help you drop the shame around struggling. That practice made postpartum kinder and more connected with others.

It also taught me how to show up for others with empathy and no judgement. Postpartum felt lighter because of that. I didn’t try to be superhuman. I accepted support and offered mine back - and it made all the difference.

Final thoughts…

I won't romanticise my journey with REDs. It stole things from me that I can never get back. But the recovery process taught me things I never expected to need: perspective, flexibility, compassion, patience, the ability to rest, nourish, ask for help. These aren’t just tools for sport; they are tools for life. And motherhood called every single one of them forward.

If you’re somewhere in REDs recovery now - whether or not parenthood is even on your radar - please know this. The work you’re doing isn’t just for sport. It’s building foundations for chapters you haven’t met yet. You’re not just becoming a stronger athlete - you’re becoming a stronger human, friend, partner, and maybe, one day, parent.