Before becoming one of ESPN’s top hosts, Laura Rutledge genuinely worried that having a baby would end her television career. Today, she leads NFL Live while raising two young children. Looking back, she readily admits how heavy that fear felt, even if her current daily hustle proves those early worries wrong.

Appearing on The Cierra Clark Show, Rutledge talked about the pressure young women often hear when they enter sports media. A demanding career means putting off kids, or maybe giving up on the idea altogether. She has lived on the other side of that assumption.

“If you want to have this career and you want to have kids, by all means, you can make it work,” she said. “But also, if you want to chase your career and wait a while to start a family, that’s okay too, whatever it is that really speaks to you.”

For Laura Rutledge, though, the bigger lesson has been accepting that she cannot get everything right. “Every single day I’m trying to do the best that I possibly can, but I fail all the time at that,” she admitted. “And I think being pretty honest about that is important, too.”

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Rutledge once thought she might have to choose. She and Josh Rutledge were married for over half a decade before having kids. When Reese was born in 2019, she feared motherhood could derail the career she had worked so hard to build.

“I sort of came up in this business thinking that it was impossible,” she revealed. “Like there was no way I was going to be able to have kids. If I had kids, it was going to ruin my career, and that was always so disappointing to me because I really wanted to have a family and I wanted to be a mom. And what I’ve been amazed by is just the support that everyone gives.”

Her fears of being pushed aside proved unfounded, but the daily reality remained demanding. With constant travel across time zones, her husband Josh stepped in as a crucial partner at home, keeping their family routine steady whenever work pulled her away.

The job still takes a toll. Rutledge has described the travel, sudden schedule changes, and constant need to be available as some of the toughest parts of the gig.

“There are definitely challenges,” she said. “It is so hard to be away from your kids.”

She has developed practical ways to make those absences easier. Her children know when she is traveling and when she expects to return. She leaves notes or small surprises for them. Calls and video chats help keep some sense of normalcy when she is on the road. And she gives plenty of credit to Josh for handling more at home when her work takes over.

But Laura Rutledge’s most honest advice may have nothing to do with calendars or travel tricks. It is about accepting that some days will simply be messy. There is no perfect routine, no magic trick, and no promise that guilt disappears. For the woman who once thought she had to make a choice, she built a version of both and accepted that sometimes it gets messy.