Nada Hafez is not your average world class player athlete. She participates in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games —while she was seven months pregnant.

The Egyptian competitor, who is just a month away from her 27th birthday, has secured a spot on her third Olympicsafter first competing in Rio in 2016 and then the long-delayed 2020 Games in Tokyo, where she finished 36th and 29th respectively. This year she is back and she made a surprise announcement after a competition.

“7 MONTHS PREGNANT OLYMPIAN!” Hafez wrote on Instagram on Monday. “What looks like two players on stage to you, was actually three! It was me, my competitor, and my yet-to-come-into-our-world, little baby!”

Hafez said she and her unborn child “have had their fair share of challenges, both physically and emotionally.”

“The rollercoaster of pregnancy is tough in itself, but fighting to maintain the balance between life and sport was downright exhausting, but worth it,” she said, thanking her husband and family for their support. “I’m writing this message to say how proud I am to have secured my place in the round of 16!”

Hafez is not only a fencer, she is also a former national gymnastics champion in Egypt, according to the International Fencing Federation, and she studied medicine at Cairo University. On her Instagram account, she says she is a clinical pathologist.

Fencing begins with 64 competitors in the individual women’s sabre competition. Hafez was among the last 16 to compete and lost to Korea’s Jeon Hayoung with a final score of 15-7. Hayoung lost in the next round to Korea’s Choi Sebin. France’s Manon Apithy-Brunet won gold and Sara Balzer won silver, while Ukraine’s Olga Kharlan won bronze.

Even though she didn’t win, Hafez says, “I was lucky.”

“This particular Olympics was different,” she wrote on Instagram. “Three *times* Olympic, but this time with a little Olympic one.”