Along with her fellow American swimmers, Dana Vollmer won the 4×100-meter medley relay at the Rio Games on Saturday night — beating the team’s arch-rivals from Australia to take the gold. It is her fifth gold medal over three Olympics. But Vollmer’s story is more interesting even than that.

The three-time Olympian and first-time mom has a purpose greater than herself; this was true even before the 2016 Games. As she trained with her coach Teri McKeever, Vollmer’s motivation moved from self to her son, Arlen, who was born in March of 2015 to Vollmer and husband Andy Grant. And now she has won gold medals at the Olympics after having a child — the first woman ever to do so.

“It was important to me to know that I was not putting swimming above raising my son,” said Vollmer.

She did big things from the start. At age 12, Vollmer, who is from Granbury, Texas, was the youngest participant in the Olympic Trials. Two years later, she was diagnosed with a heart condition, which she ultimately overcame — and was able to join the American swimming team for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.

During those 2004 Games, she felt the excitement as a teenage swimmer. In the 4×200-meter free relay, Vollmer helped the team break a 17-year-old world record and won her first gold medal.

She didn’t qualify for the 2008 Games, but during that time taught swimming in an effort to decrease the drowning statistics in Fiji — which gave her perspective outside of herself.

“To be involved in an aspect of swimming that was saving lives — for me, it took me out of the self-centered, ‘my-world-is-over, I-didn’t-make-an-Olympic team’ [mentality],” said Vollmer in an interview with USA Swimming.

When she participated in the 2012 Games in London, she was motivated for her own success, especially after missing the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. And she had the full support of her family.

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For the 2016 Rio Olympics, Vollmer discovered the biggest motivation yet — her son.

“To find that inner strength when I didn’t think I had it … The hard times have made me stronger than I’ve ever been.”

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As a new mom, Vollmer saw Rio as just the beginning. “I’m glad I have that life perspective now, especially since it’s very freeing to stand behind that block and not have that fear of failure,” she said in a press conference.

Having a child has challenged Vollmer to be the best swimmer she’s ever been.

“It was important to me to know that I was not putting swimming above raising my son,” she said in an interview with USA Swimming. “[I could] put that aggression into the pool, then come home and be the best mom I can be.”

Related: Are You Raising an Olympian?

“The brain begins reshaping itself in response to the baby, which is made possible by an influx of several hormones,” said Tracy Cutchlow, author of “Zero to Five: 70 Essential Parenting Tips Based on Science.” “New mothers’ gray matter volume increases in areas of the brain that support maternal motivation (hypothalamus), reward and emotion processing (substantia nigra and amygdala), sensory integration (parietal lobe), and reasoning and judgment (prefrontal cortex).”

But who said motherhood was a doggy-paddle?

“You begin to know yourself more deeply because your baby, in imitating you and reacting to you, shows you so clearly who you are.”

“It was definitely more challenging than I had thought it would be, in a lot of different areas,” said Vollmer at a press conference. “To find that inner strength when I didn’t think I had it … The hard times have made me stronger than I’ve ever been in the past.”

Her baby boy dissolved her fear of failure and gave her a combination of perspective and emotional strength.

“On days when you feel like you are drowning, you dig deep and keep going, because you must. This proves to you that you can,” Cutchlow said. “You begin to know yourself more deeply because your baby, in imitating you and reacting to you, shows you so clearly who you are.”

“It’s made me learn to be nice to myself, to forgive myself,” Vollmer said in a pre-Olympics press conference. “It’s OK that I’m struggling. It doesn’t make me a bad mom.”

Related: Parenting an Olympian: The Thrill and The Agony

Being a mom also helped Vollmer focus on the health aspect of training for the Olympics.

“I think I had always focused much more on the training. Now I feel I have a much better balance in my life.”

“Realizing how important recovery is — it was a very much health approach to the comeback,” said Vollmer in a press conference. “To value sleep, to value nutrition, to value that hydration part. I think I had always focused much more on the training side and now I feel like I have a much better balance in my life.”

“Motherhood can also encourage [women] to reach for the stars,” said psychotherapist Kelley Kitley, who is based in the Chicago area. “We just need to tap into our strength — we can achieve greatness with no limiting beliefs. Having a child can be empowering.”

Before her meets, Vollmer writes her name on her foot, since that is the last thing she sees before diving into a race, according to Today. For the preliminaries and semi-finals, she reportedly wrote “forward.” For the finals, Vollmer wrote “Arlen” as her motivation.

With Arlen as her new motivation, can Vollmer really lose? And now she says there may be Baby No. 2 in her future — and possibly more Olympic training after that.