By Megan Armitage

Paralympic champion Natasha Baker knows first-hand the long and winding road back to elite sport after giving birth.

The 34-year-old welcomed her son Joshua last year and admitted her return to sport has been a challenging one.

Despite her struggles, Baker is expected to trot out in pursuit for her seventh gold at Paris 2024.

And after a turbulent 14 months of re-learning how to ride her horse and become a mum, Baker is excited to showcase that even if your baby bounce-back isn't perfect, it is still achievable.

"There's a lot in the media about bounce-back," she said.

"You see these amazing women come back to competition so quickly and that's amazing for them but it's not for everybody.

"That's not the recovery every single woman has, and I think it's really good to speak about that other experience.

"Every birth, baby and mum are different and coming at it from a disability point of view, it was always going to be difficult for me.

"It's okay if you're a year post-partum and you're not back to where you were before, or if you never get back to where you were before.

"There's been a massive change in your life, and you need to embrace that."

Baker contracted transverse myelitis at 14 months old and was left with weakness and no feeling in her legs.

The Paralympian therefore heavily relies on her core muscles day-to-day and revealed that having a C-Section impacted her post-partum recovery more than most.

"A C-Section is huge anyway, it's major abdominal surgery, but adding my disability which means I have to rely a lot on my core in the day-to-day, that made things difficult," she added.

"Recovery was okay and I got back on the horse about 11 weeks after I had Joshua and took that really slowly.

"But it's been a journey getting back into the saddle and I'm getting there but I thought I would be there a lot sooner by now."

Baker was inspired to become a Paralympian when watching the Sydney 2000 Games and saw her dream come true at London 2012.

Baker is taking one step at a time on her potential return to the Paralympic stage and wants to show other mothers what is possible.

"The results are out of my control," she said. "I want to show any mum who's watching that you can come back and do something special and show Joshua when he's older that I gave birth to him and then competed at a Paralympic Games.

"You can face challenges, but this is possible if you want to do it."

Baker fell in love with horses as a child and is now sponsored by Agria, one of the world’s leading animal insurers, specialising in small animal, equine, and agricultural insurance.

"Before the competitions and the medals, the thing that came first was my love of horses," she said.

"The fact that Agria have come up with a life-long policy which allows the insurance to carry on with the horse no matter how old it gets, is so crucial."

Agria, the UK's only lifetime equine insurance, has been enriching lives with animals since 1890.