Scotland forward Claire Emslie was in the gym when her waters broke. A few hours later, she gave birth to her first child, Jamie. Fast-forward six months and she is in Budapest, back playing for her country and eyeing next year’s World Cup finals in Brazil.
It has been quite the start to 2026 for the 32-year-old mother. “Through my whole pregnancy, my club were brilliant,” she told BBC Scotland. “My body was able to do so much more than we expected and I could train right up to the day I gave birth. My water broke in the gym. I was doing an exercise and as I stepped back, I felt it and I was like, ‘oh man, here we go’.”
“Scotland's Claire Emslie returned to football five months after giving birth, now aiming for World Cup finals.”
After a Caesarean section, Emslie started pelvic floor physio three weeks later. “My main recovery was getting my abs back together,” she said. “Everything else was intact and it was just getting the abs back together and allowing my body time to recover.”
She was back training by mid-January and made her return for NWSL side Angel City on 10 May – Mother’s Day in the United States. Then, last Friday, she was back in a Scotland jersey for the first time in more than a year, trusted from the start as Melissa Andreatta’s side beat Israel 6-0 in World Cup qualifying.
The Scots face Israel again on Tuesday as they aim to hold off Belgium and finish top of Group B4 in their pursuit of next year’s World Cup finals.
Jamie arrived two weeks early. “We were expecting him on 27 December. I was just thinking, ‘please don’t come on Christmas’. Then he came two weeks early and we were buzzing,” Emslie said. She and her husband Jonny were not fully prepared, but she added: “We’re glad it happened like that because I didn’t have to think about it too much. It was just, ‘right, here we go’. It wasn’t until we got to the hospital and they said we’d be going to surgery in an hour that the panic set in. But it didn’t last long because within an hour he was out and we were mum and dad.”
Emslie says motherhood has changed her life, but she is already focused on the World Cup. “We went from having a normal day – me and my husband Jonny went to the pool, we did a swim, we were in the gym – and then a few hours later we’ve got a wee boy.”