Natalie Spooner with her almost four-month-old son, Rory, in their Komoka, Ont. home on Mar 28. After giving birth to her son in December, she’s now back on the ice for the women's hockey world championship.Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail
Natalie Spooner sat in her living room on the morning before leaving for her ninth women’s world hockey championship, discussing how her packing list for this tournament varied enormously from the other eight.
Along with all the usual hockey stuff, the long-time Team Canada forward was bringing diapers and a stroller for this tournament in Brampton, Ont., a breast pump and a smart bassinet with a built-in swaddle that soothes a fussing baby back to sleep with womb-like motion and sound.
Normally, at the hotel during a tournament, Canada’s players room with a teammate, but Spooner’s new baby son is along for this trip, so she has her own room. Her husband and her mom are taking turns staying to help, since they both live within a two-hour drive.
“This new bassinet is a game-changer,” Spooner said of a high-tech white baby bed she has, called a Snoo. “I’m bringing it so he can sleep well.”
Spooner’s last 14 months are head-spinning. She won her third Olympic medal with Canada in Beijing on Feb.17, 2022, and gave birth to Rory on Dec. 6. This week, she’s competing in one of the premier events in her sport. He’s a big boy already – weighing over 18 pounds and wearing 9- to 12-month-old clothes, she said proudly. But he’s barely four months old and relies on her for his meals, every few hours.
“I’m still breastfeeding,” she said, seated on the floor playing with Rory, as he lay belly-up, cooing and gripping a rubber ball with his tiny hands. “So I can’t ever have him too far away.”
She and husband, Adam Redmond, knew they wanted to start a family soon after the Olympics, the most prestigious event in women’s hockey. If a player wants to give birth then regain her roster spot on a national team, it takes careful planning within the four-year Olympic cycle. The couple learned they were pregnant a month after the Games ended.
She missed just one major tournament – the world championship last summer in Denmark – squirming while she watched on TV. She aimed to get back for this year’s worlds, April 5-16 in Brampton, to be part of Canada’s quest at a third straight world title. The 32-year-old new mom was back on the ice in mid-January, then played in her first game on Feb. 24 – the first of six she got under her belt at Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (PWHPA) events, hoping she’d done enough to show Hockey Canada she deserved a roster spot for the worlds.
Spooner also had an impressive résumé to show too, including 14 points in seven games for Canada at the Beijing Olympics, fourth best of all players there. Still, a comeback this soon after childbirth is ambitious in a high-speed, contact sport like hockey, especially with a growing pool of talented women vying to make Canada’s team.
“I’m just so grateful to be there, back with the girls,” Spooner said. “I’m going to try to be the same player that they know. We’ll see how the puzzle unfolds when I get there.”
“I wish he could remember this”
Canada opened the tournament on Wednesday night against Switzerland, and the 5,000-seat CAA Centre was almost full. The 5-foot-10 forward burst out on a line with Sarah Nurse and Sarah Fillier. She picked up an early tripping penalty, and got comfy in front of the net, screening the Swiss goalie in direct firing line of Canadian slap shots.
It was halfway through the first period when Spooner provided the feel-good moment of the night. She pounced on a turnover, and fired a wrist shot from the slot, burying Canada’s first goal of the tournament – the 67th of her career for Canada. She beamed and threw her arms in the air as teammates swallowed her up in a hug. She added an assist too in Canada’s 4-0 win.
“It’s pretty special to have her back,” Nurse said. “She had Rory strapped to her chest at pregame meal, so to see a full-time mom go back to full-time professional athlete, that is pretty inspiring.”
The baby was in the stands with his dad and grandma, all wearing red Spooner jerseys, Rory also sporting a big set of headphones to protect his young ears. He’s with the players a lot when they’re not on the ice.
“It’s actually been a lot of fun for our team, the athletes and our staff having Rory around with us everywhere we go,” Team Canada head coach Troy Ryan said. “Natalie’s done a great job managing that.”
Spooner said it’s nice the baby has “so many aunties” on the team to hold him.
“I wish he could remember this,” she said. “Because I think it’s pretty special for him to be surrounded by so many amazing women.”
“I didn’t know if this was doable”
The journey to this comeback was paved early in Spooner’s pregnancy.
She worked out in her basement gym at home and was on the ice throughout her pregnancy, but did not play in games or take contact. Spooner worked with a pelvic floor specialist and a personal trainer on strength and conditioning work she could do safely. She skated nearby her Komoka, Ont., home in London with the Western University women’s hockey team, and in the Toronto area with players in the PWHPA, up until four weeks before Rory arrived.
She posted candid photos and stories about her pregnancy on social media – from workouts to her growing stomach, as she sized into bigger hockey pants. A cornerstone of Team Canada for more than a decade, Spooner has become one of the most visible women in the sport. She has her own hockey academy for girls, has appeared in festivities at NHL all-star weekend, and is part of the PWHPA core working to build a new women’s pro league that could reportedly debut as soon as next season. She has a big following on Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.
“I wanted to show women that it’s okay to do what you love still,” Spooner said. “I didn’t know if this was doable, but I was like, this is the journey, let’s see how it goes. You hear a lot of horror stories about people’s pregnancies, right, like the sickness, or traumatic births, and those things do happen. But then there’s also some great experiences, and I wanted to share mine.”
Right after Rory was born, she found it hard to envision being an elite athlete again.
“The first week after I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, there’s no way I’m going be able to make it back, because everything just feels different,’” Spooner said. “But then it comes back.”
While many new parents take it easy in their first months with a baby, Spooner and family have been busy, and surrounded by attention from the moment Rory arrived. Cameras from TSN followed them, to the rinks and doctor’s appointments for a feature piece. Adidas brought in a full crew to shoot a television commercial in their home about her comeback.
She travelled to three different PWHPA events to play – flying with Rory to Tampa, Washington and Palm Springs, Calif. She learned on the fly how to balance hockey and caring for a newborn, with the help of her husband, or her mom, Ann-Marie Spooner, coming along from Scarborough. Modern cordless wearable breast pumps make it more convenient to pump milk discretely while covering up, even in a dressing room before a game if needed. In the PWHPA, someone often ran a bottle of pumped milk out to the baby if she couldn’t be with him when he needed to eat.
A delayed flight into the Tampa event saw the family arrive at their hotel at 2 a.m. and tested their limits, with the travel-weary baby waking every hour. Spooner played that event on very little sleep.
“I was tired,” she said. “But I had so much adrenaline being back.”
Spooner isn’t the first to have a baby during her national team hockey career. Canada’s Meaghan Mikkelson returned after having each of her kids in 2015 and 2019; and Becky Kellar in 2005 and 2008. Spooner’s timeline has been a little quicker.
On Team USA, Jenny Schmidgall-Potter was a mom for much of her long career, returning after having children in 2001 and 2007. Long-time goalie Alex Cavallini was one of the last cuts from the U.S roster for this world championship, as she tried to return after having baby daughter Isabella on Dec. 25. American captain Kendal Coyne-Schofield is missing this tournament because she is pregnant, but hopes to wear the ‘C’ again.
Spooner said she’s had some pelvic pain, but otherwise feels pretty good playing. She’s adapted her old off-ice pregame warmup routine, removing all the sprinting, at least for now. Between her team back home and Hockey Canada staff, she has some 10 health practitioners working with her, including obstetricians, athletic therapists and sports doctors.
“There’s so little data or research on high-level athletes returning to international competition in a collision sport after having a baby,” said Christine Atkins, a certified athletic therapist with Hockey Canada. “With her really large support team, we just had to take it day by day, and see how she responded to the different loads and intensities that we gradually introduced.”
As for Rory, family says he seems entertained while watching the live game action. And how is the smart bassinet working out in the hotel so far?
“Good,” Spooner reported after Wednesday’s game. “He’s probably sleeping the best he’s ever slept.”