Ashley Hatch was on a work trip when her baby started crawling.
The Washington Spirit forward had a match in Los Angeles, more than 2,000 miles from home, when 7-month-old Leo was graduating from a shuffling, haphazard scoot into a full crawl. But that was no problem: Leo was on the road with her, and so was her husband, Jeff. They shared the milestone as a family. And so did the rest of the Spirit, with players and staff crowding around, putting cups down on the floor to create a miniature obstacle course for the baby. Hatch felt her heart swell.
“It’s really cool to see other people love your child,” says Hatch, 31. “I feel really lucky.”
That’s been a theme for the Spirit this season.
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Hatch is one of four players who have given birth in the past 15 months, joining Andi Sullivan, Casey Krueger and Aubrey Kingsbury. The babies have come along for the ride as their mothers have worked their way back from maternity leave: An NWSL policy lets them designate a child care provider who can travel with the club at no added cost to the player.
That’s become an essential benefit for the new moms and a source of delight for their teammates. (Some jokingly refer to “emotional support babies.”) As the Spirit push for a return to the NWSL Championship, they’re doing it with a bit less sleep, and a bit more collective maternal love.
“You’re so happy for yourself, and then you’re so happy for each other,” says Sullivan, who gave birth to a daughter, Millie, in July 2025. “Then you multiply that over and over and over again throughout the team.”
The experience of motherhood in the league has changed significantly over the past few years. Originally, the NWSL did not have standardized contract protections for maternity leave, and it certainly did not have opportunities for paid child care on the road. With low salaries in a fledgling league, players often felt it would be impossible to plan for a baby while continuing their soccer careers.
“When I first started, there was no chance that I was going to start a family and also try playing,” says Hatch, who entered the league in 2017.
Many of her fellow NWSL players thought similarly. Those who did have children found that accommodations could vary wildly from team to team. But that shifted in 2022, when the NWSL negotiated its first collective bargaining agreement with the Players Association, including a full suite of policies around pregnancy and parenthood.
“I instantly think back to when I first got in the league, and how few mothers there were,” says Krueger, a defender who has played for a decade in the NWSL. “Now, it’s just like you look around, and every team has so many mothers.”
There are, indeed, a record number of moms on league rosters this year: There were 28 at the beginning of the season, and a few more have given birth since. The players say that is not a coincidence.
Many of them closely watched the example set by the WNBA, which first negotiated a traveling child care provider benefit in 2020, making parenthood feel more accessible to players in that league. As the NWSL grew, the players’ salaries increased and protections expanded, making pregnancy and parenthood feel like a more secure choice. The original collective bargaining agreement from 2022 was renegotiated with added benefits in 2024. It covers everything from guaranteed parental leave to that crucial paid travel for a child care provider.
“How many occupations can you say that mothers get to travel with their kids and do what they love?” Krueger says.
Early motherhood still brings stress, sleep deprivation and scheduling challenges. The return to play is physically taxing and highly variable. But it no longer feels like quite such an existential threat to a pro soccer career.
Krueger is the Spirit’s resident veteran mom. She gave birth to her first child, a boy, in the summer of 2022. When she joined the Spirit in free agency in 2024, so did baby Caleb, coming on road trips along with his nanny.
That felt like a revelation for some younger teammates: They watched up close as Krueger balanced soccer and motherhood. She fit nursing and pumping around training, just like any player might fit a regularly needed task. She allowed them to see that a high chair could be a welcome addition to the occasional team meal. And she kept performing at a high level. In addition to her club play, Krueger is a fixture on the U.S. women’s national soccer team; she gave birth for the first time in between winning bronze at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo and gold in Paris four years later.
“She was just a huge inspiration to me,” Sullivan says of Krueger. “And there are other incredible moms, both in the league and on the national team, who made it possible even when it was really, really difficult. They turned around and fought to make it easier for us and safer for us, and I think seeing them do that then made me want to do it, too.”
Krueger gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Calla, in March. And she was joined on maternity leave by a trio of first-time moms in Sullivan, Hatch and Kingsbury.
Their pregnancies were spaced over the course of a year. (Not intentionally, they are quick to say: “We didn’t plan this at all,” Hatch laughs. “We all just happened to be ready about the same time.”) Sullivan and Hatch have returned to play. Krueger has resumed practicing with the team and is targeting a full return this season. Kingsbury, their veteran goalkeeper, is still on maternity leave after giving birth to son Carter in July, but she has made several appearances at the team training facility, baby in tow.
Just as they’re in slightly different phases of physical recovery, their babies are in slightly different phases of early childhood, which has been an unexpected blessing.
“We help each other every day,” Krueger said. “It’s really cool to have that. Because it can be pretty isolating, so it’s really special to have that here with a group.”
It has been an especially poignant shared experience for Sullivan, Hatch and Kingsbury, navigating motherhood for the first time and doing it together. They are the longest-tenured members of this roster: All three landed on the Spirit during the same week in January 2018. They have watched the club pass through different coaches and owners and facilities. They have won a championship together and lost a championship together. They have supported each other as they have bounced on and off the national team.
Now, after going through so much of their early adulthood together, they are going through one more big life change on the Spirit.
“We’ve been through a lot,” Sullivan says. “So we’ve gained a really good understanding of one another. … It’s just a very kind of peaceful thing, because you know you’re not the only one, and it’s just another way in which we’re going through something together.”
Hatch and Sullivan have both designated their husbands as their child care providers for team-related travel. (While men’s soccer culture traditionally has “WAGs,” or wives and girlfriends, they joke about their “HABs,” or husbands and boyfriends.) The benefit has been crucial, they say, especially when it comes to nursing and pumping.
“Getting to bring her, and bring someone to take care of her, is really important,” Sullivan says of having her daughter on road trips. It has been fun, too.
“Before having Leo, Jeff would stay home and I would go on a trip and come back,” Hatch says. “Now, the whole family’s going, and it’s like, wow, this is a little weird.”
After a decade of traveling as a pro athlete, she’s realized there was plenty about the experience that she took for granted, but it’s all completely new to her husband. “It makes it exciting,” she says. “It’s just really cool to create those memories together as a family.”
And as a team.
“With Caleb, I always say, like, he doesn’t realize how lucky he is,” Krueger says of her firstborn. “The girls show so much support for him, and the same with all the other kids, with Millie, and with Leo, and now with Carter. It’s so special to have that many aunties.”
The babies have become much-loved members of the squad. “It just brings a fun energy to everything,” says defender Tara Rudd, who does not have children of her own but hopes to someday.
“Obviously, it makes things so much easier logistically for the mother, but it’s fun for the team, too,” says Rudd, who has long sat in front of Sullivan on the team bus and loves that her seating arrangement now means sitting in front of Millie, her “best friend on the bus.”
Eventually, the mothers say, they can’t wait to explain this to their children. Look at everyone you met. Look at the games you saw. Look at everywhere you went. All before they could walk. Or, as it turns out, right as they started to crawl.
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