Married at 19 as Amanda Barley to builder Seth Palmer, the nurse was ready several years later for the calling.
"It was quite difficult but I had them close together because I was either breastfeeding or pregnant for like three years solid.
"I was nullified and didn't do any exercise so it was just kids."
Now the children have grown up Palmer feels as if she's coming out on the other end of the gauntlet, as it were.
"It's kind of like I can run again, I can play sport and I don't have a baby at home who needs to be fed."
From that accomplishment and sense of fulfilment arise a mutual respect and admiration for those who seamlessly juggle motherhood with sport.
"We have two mums in Outkast who both have had babies in the last year so they did amazing things to juggle that and I never did so I definitely enjoy coming back to netball after motherhood but no regrets though," she says of Julie Varcoe and Maddie Pakoti.
She's heard the argument that spacing children out has its benefits but accepts she'll never know the difference and realises it always differs from one mum to another.
"I think for the young girls in the game, they have to take it seriously and want it while they're young because they have no ties with kids and a husband."
No doubt, motherhood isn't an epitaph on the headstone of a woman's sporting life. Palmer points out the number of Silver Ferns and Transtasman Championship netballers who have carved a post-children niche, such as Jodi Brown and Irene van Dyk.
"I felt old when I came back because I had injuries," says the lanky player who broke her leg playing touch rugby in January last year but lost another eight weeks to a ruptured Achilles five games into helping out Outkast when the then coach, Kane Makea, now co-coach of Elusive, sent out an SOS.
"I kind of hear that voice inside me saying, 'Hey, you're too old for it now'," she says with a grin.
If anything, Palmer believes motherhood has made her stronger mentally, reflected in what she needs to do to make time for training.
"On a Wednesday I will start with my meals defrosted then I'll bring the kids home from school.
"I'll bathe them all and they'll be dressed. Dinner's prepared early and everything else ready when I walk out of the door for training at six."
It hits an exhausted Palmer, when she arrives at Flaxmere Gym, to see a bevy of schoolgirls waltz in footloose and fancy free.
"Motherhood makes you prioritise your time so if you want to do anything you'll make it happen."
Consequently, netball doesn't just become a release valve but something more purposeful than a game.
How long she'll play is a million-dollar question.
"If I injure myself again my husband will say no more of sports at all because he did the hard yards last year when I was in bed and on crutches.
"I couldn't do anything with the kids so he had to do the work and motherhood."
Touch wood the former New Zealand Secondary Schools' representative won't do herself any more harm. If she does, picking up a coaching clipboard isn't her forte although she's open to carrying on "critiquing" and helping out defenders when her playing days are curtailed.
"I haven't fully recovered from the Achilles injury this year so I kind of give them direction, I guess."
The hallmarks of a defender, Palmer believes, are to be explosive and possess ability to scavenge for the ball.
"I think they also need to be very quick, light, strong to hold your ground but also clean," she says, juxtaposing her ideal defenders with those who can offer all those qualities but be clumsy and dangerous.
Her love of netball goes back to her childhood when she flirted with myriad codes, including basketball and volleyball.
On leaving Hastings Intermediate for Sacred Heart College in Napier, while living in Havelock North, she found her choices were limited.
"I've always been into sports and would have loved to have played volleyball, basketball and athletics but mum just restricted me, saying we weren't going to training four times a week," she says of her parents, Roz and John Barley.
It helped that her friends gravitated towards netball.
Her first foray at club level came with the Huias so as a teenager she honed her skills under a seasoned Ange McLean.
When then Huias player Charissa Barham moved to Otane as player/coach, Palmer followed.
"We were playing very good netball in those days so I was just sucking it all up."
Representative duties beckoned via Flyers in the National Bank Cup for two years before Eastern emerged so she added Tanya Dearns' tutorship to her resume.
"You could always ask the question whether I could have gone higher but I don't have any regrets."
