It was once a rare occurrence to see a female athlete return to the top of their sport after giving birth. “I went from a C-section to a second pulmonary embolism to a Grand Slam final.” SarahShepSport on the recovery process.
There was a look of mild shock on the face of Elina Svitolina in the moments after her Wimbledon quarter-final opponent, the top seed, Iga Swiatek hit one final forehand into the net.“I don’t really know what is happening right now in my head,” she told the BBC moments after her victory. “It’s just really unbelievable… At the beginning of the tournament, if someone had told me and my team that we would be in the semi-final and beaten the world No 1, I would have just said that they are crazy.
Outside of tennis, Christie Pearce combined being a mother of two with winning two Olympic gold medals and a Thankfully, not every woman goes through as traumatic a birth experience as Williams. But even so, there is a huge range of factors that athletes have to consider when returning to elite sport after giving birth.
In January this year, the Chelsea midfielder Melanie Leupolz made her first start for the club since having her first child the previous October. She praised the club for the support she had received through pregnancy and beyond. Leupolz had fortnightly catch-ups with the Chelsea manager Emma Hayes to discuss her training programme, was offered a contract extension and received support from a pelvic floor coach.
As Williams’ experience showed, elite athletes are not immune from anything that can happen through pregnancy or birth. In fact, says Keeble, they are actually a bit more at risk of suffering from pelvic floor problems. Unlike muscles elsewhere in the body, those of the pelvic floor are the only ones that have caused debate over whether or not exercise is good for them.
After birth, hormones take on average three to six months to return to normal. “That’s either from the time you give birth if you’re not breastfeeding or from the time you stop breastfeeding,” says Keeble. “It’s a rough guide as everyone’s different but a good gauge is when your periods come back. Until recently, the only real guidance practitioners had on post-natal return to exercise came from guidelines published in 2019 on returning to running. That advised no return to impact sport before three months, but Keeble says that advice has changed.
“You have to say, ‘How have you done that?’ And really get underneath the bonnet of how they’ve made that happen” says Moffat. “You’ve got to think of that woman on the sofa that has her baby and had post-natal depression, a husband or a partner at work, has money troubles, no time to go to the gym. Seeing these elite athletes winning is not motivational. She’s like, ‘F*** off. That is not my life.’ That’s the bit that has really frustrated me over the last couple of years with all the stories coming out about these mum athletes. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, look what you can do if you put your mind to it.
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