Abbie Ward interview: I approached my pregnancy like a knee injury

England rugby player Abbie Ward is scrolling on her phone. Within seconds, she finds what she is looking for and begins reeling off some numbers. “Here we are… squatting 115kg, Romanian deadlifting 90kg, cleaning 60kg, deadlifting 154kg,” she says.

Ward is particularly proud of these numbers – not because they represent her personal bests in the gym but because they are the weights she was shifting three days before giving birth to her daughter, Hallie, in July this year.

Sitting down with Telegraph Sport at Bristol Bears’ plush high-performance centre, the second row capped 61 times by England has a glint in her eye. This weekend, Ward – the first player to benefit from the Rugby Football Union’s landmark maternity policy for players – will make her highly anticipated return to the pitch, less than four months after a caesarean section.

Ward’s comeback is one defined by relentless determination – perhaps a borderline obsession – to show that becoming a mother should not have to spell the end of an athlete’s career, like it did for so many of her predecessors.

“When I spoke about the time frame in which I wanted to get back, a lot of people were like, ‘That would be good, wouldn’t it?’ They probably doubted it because they’ve not necessarily seen it before,” Ward says, in her first newspaper interview since becoming a mother. “I suppose a lot of people thought that my international career was done.”

When she became pregnant weeks after England were agonisingly beaten by New Zealand in last year’s World Cup final, Ward was adamant she would return to the pitch. With the support of England Rugby and Bristol’s medical teams, not to mention her husband Dave, the Bears head coach, she enlisted the help of one of the country’s leading obstetricians, Prof Tim Draycott, and opted to have an elective C-section – not only so she could prepare for major surgery but because Hallie was a big baby, weighing almost 10lb by the end of her pregnancy.

“It was so chilled. I’ve had more stressful haircuts,” says Ward, who admits she found the photo shoot for the launch of the new Premiership Women’s Rugby season more taxing than the C-section. “There were girls who were just in sports bras and leggings. I was like, ‘I had a baby 10 weeks ago, I’m a bit self-conscious’. They didn’t put any tan on me, either.”

During her pregnancy, though, Ward continued showing up to club training with her bump in a conscious effort to normalise the sight of a pregnant athlete in a high-performance environment. The week before she had Hallie, she was lifting the same weights that she had been lifting ahead of last year’s World Cup final.

“I was still training every single day,” Ward says. “I wanted to make sure other people could see that and ask any questions and speak about it openly and be like, ‘Oh s---, Abbie is still training hard, she can still do that’.

“The girls were great. When we’d be doing speed sessions, I know I’m not going to gas a winger but they adapt. I could still do hand-offs, but they’re not going to come at me as hard. Everyone found a really nice balance.

“I wanted to set that precedent, for people to look at me and go, ‘She’s pregnant, but she’s still showing up, training hard and working hard and showing her worth as a team-mate’. It’s been a complete unknown – I haven’t had any players to look at.”

Not since Emma Croker in 2012 has an England player given birth and returned to competitive rugby. In a reminder of how players were left to navigate their postpartum journey with little support, Croker, a hooker who had an emergency C-section, got a team-mate to run at her in training to see if the scar across her abdomen would split open upon contact.

“I tried to be as proactive as possible about my scar,” says Ward, who went to former England fly-half and mother-of-three Katy Daley-Mclean and fellow Bristol Bear Deborah Wills for advice, and returned to training two weeks after giving birth.

“I’ve torn my anterior cruciate ligament twice and I approached it exactly the same as a knee injury. The great thing about a planned C-section is that you knew exactly when it was going to be, we knew then it would be a C-section recovery. If I had a vaginal birth, you don’t know what the recovery is going to be.

“I’d done a lot of prehab before to strengthen my core and my abs. Postpartum, I put everything in place that I could, from silicone strips over my scar to help the peeling and red-light therapy to help with scarring. I did exercises on power plates. I don’t know if it all helped, but going in for my check-ups, they thought my scar was healing great.”

Throughout, Ward was desperate to maintain her sporting identity. “The thing I want to reiterate is that post-birth, I’m a rugby player. Treat me as a rugby player,” she says.

“There’s so much stuff that’s written down that I feel it’s outdated. It’s information that’s out there for the general public. When you’re pregnant, they say don’t lift heavy things, don’t get out of breath. I’m a rugby player, so of course I’m going to lift heavy things.”

In a similar vein, she feels the RFU’s maternity policy needs further road testing. Any player returning to the Red Roses squad within 12 months of giving birth can bring their baby to a training camp. Ward, however, is already questioning whether that time frame is long enough.

“I’m comfortable with saying what works and what doesn’t work,” Ward says, in reference to the policy. “There’s some stuff that’s been great, but some stuff that needs to change because in real working life it might not work as well.

“I’m not taking Hallie into camps yet. That won’t happen until Six Nations. In the contract, it’s up to a year, but that’s not too relevant because during the baby’s first six months, you’re really not in camp, so it probably needs to be a bit longer than a year.”

She is unequivocal about what needs to change for those from other home nations. At present, there is no maternity policy in place for Welsh, Scottish or Irish female players.

“I don’t want to say I’m lucky that I have maternity leave,” Ward says. “It’s 2023. It should be the norm. It was bittersweet speaking to some of the girls who’ve been part of England before and had to finish their careers early because they didn’t have that support.

“It shouldn’t be that just because you’re English, you’re supported as a pregnant rugby player. I’d love to see the Welsh, Scottish, Irish have something really comprehensive. Anyone who’s a professional should have that support so they don’t have to make a choice between giving up their careers and starting a family.”

As for advice she would give to those looking to return to sport after giving birth, she says: “You’re capable of much more than you think. As tiring as it is, when you’re feeding every couple of hours, you think you’d be knackered, you think coming in to train for three hours would be the last thing I wanted to do. 

“But I had so much more energy coming in, being around the girls, having that stimulation and that buzz and then going back to Hallie. So what I would say to others is to try and keep finding that outlet.”

Ward, who will co-captain the Bears alongside Amber Reed this season, is merely viewing her first club appearance for Bristol against Sale on Saturday in the new Premiership Women’s Rugby season as a mini milestone.

An international comeback is her end goal, while she makes no secret of the fact she wants to feature in the 2025 Women’s World Cup in England and beyond. 

“The next thing is for me to show everyone I’m back,” Ward says, with an air of defiance that suggests she will be more than capable of reconciling motherhood with elite sport and, in doing so, inspire countless others along the way.