Over the years, whenever I heard about a female athlete getting pregnant in the midst of their playing careers, I would sympathize with them, thinking about how hard it must be to balance a profession that requires you to be in peak physical condition and a pregnancy that pushes your body through so many changes. How this type of career crossroads in sports is a challenge only women face. How it can force women to feel pressured to choose between starting a family and earning a living or building an athletic legacy. 

Rather quickly, though, I would move onto something else, appreciating the courage of these women but not giving their experiences much more thought.

Then, in October 2023, I learned I was pregnant with my first child. The day after I found out, I figured I was early enough in the pregnancy to play in the final playoff game of my co-ed soccer league. With about 10 minutes left in the game, I planted my foot, cut with the ball and felt my right knee crumple. The doctor confirmed my fears the next day – I had torn the ACL and meniscus in my right knee.

I was fortunate throughout my youth and collegiate soccer career that I never suffered a major injury. Now, I was facing two huge unknowns with my body at the same time, and I was petrified. I ultimately decided to delay surgery to repair the torn ligaments until after childbirth, to avoid risking my baby’s health and mine. So, I went through seven months of physical therapy to stabilize my knee as it supported my pregnancy weight gain; gave birth to my daughter with a torn ACL and meniscus; and rehabilitated all over again while caring for my baby (with much-needed support from family) after having surgery five and a half months postpartum.

People say you can’t fully appreciate giving birth to and raising a child until you experience it yourself, and they are absolutely right. For me, the ordeal with my knee gave me a completely new perspective on athlete pregnancies, in particular.

These women are nothing less than superheroes.

There are countless examples of female athletes not only continuing to train in their sports up until giving birth, but also returning to elite competition within months after childbirth and while breastfeeding or caring for a newborn. In the United States and other parts of the world, we have come a long way in supporting female athletes through pregnancy and motherhood. But there are still plenty of cases of women facing discrimination, cultural backlash and financial and professional consequences because of their pregnancies.

Women attending colleges and universities that receive federal funds have had pregnancy and maternity protections under Title IX since 1972. To name a few, schools are legally required to allow pregnant students to continue to participate in classes and extracurricular activities, including sports, grant medical absences due to pregnancy and permit students to return to their school activities following their leave. It took until 1999 for U.S. Soccer, the official governing body of soccer in the United States, to enact a maternity leave policy for the women’s national team after players fought for the right. As recently as 2020, WNBA players achieved fully paid maternity leave – after previously being guaranteed only half – and additional family planning benefits for players with eight or more years of service as part of the league’s collective bargaining agreement. (The players were arguing for additional maternity benefits in negotiations with the WNBA over a new CBA, which the sides verbally agreed to on Wednesday but the full details of which have yet to be revealed.)

These legal and contractual protections, however, have not prevented lawsuits and allegations of discrimination and mistreatment on the basis of pregnancy:

These cases are only ones we know about – and ones that have been documented in the U.S. One recent high-profile international case involved soccer star Sara Björk Gunnarsdóttir, who won her lawsuit against top-tier European women’s club Olympique Lyonnais in 2023 after not being paid her full salary during her pregnancy.

At the same time, there has been a noticeable cultural shift toward a broader acceptance of women in sports putting successful careers on hold temporarily to have babies – and juggling motherhood as they return to the game. Arizona women’s basketball coach Adia Barnes made waves in 2021 when ESPN reporter Holly Rowe shared on live television that Barnes pumped breast milk for her 6-month-old daughter during halftime of the NCAA championship game, a gesture that has inspired other moms in coaching. UNLV basketball player Sydni Summers went viral for taking her media day photos while pregnant, and not long before going into labor. In the past few years, we have seen USWNT standouts Sophia Smith (25) and Mallory Swanson (27) and WNBA star Napheesa Collier (25) have babies in their 20s, at the peak of their careers.

- Holly Rowe on Adia Barnes

Balancing sports and motherhood takes on a completely new meaning in an individual sport, where athletes don’t have a team to fall back on and are solely responsible for their own standing. Taking a break from competition to have a baby can hurt a player’s ranking, marketing opportunities and payouts. Serena Williams famously won the 2017 Australian Open while nine weeks pregnant with her first daughter, and former No. 1 Naomi Osaka’s ranking had dropped to 831 when she returned to the tour in January 2024, 15 months after having her own daughter. For individual sport athletes without the profiles and sponsorship backing of Williams or Osaka, two of the best tennis players in the world, the climb back from a maternity leave is even more challenging.

The same can be said for those athletes who have difficulty conceiving, a less publicized part of the motherhood journey, similar to breastfeeding and miscarriages. For LGBTQ+ athletes, egg freezing, IVF and IUI procedures are typically long, expensive and physically and emotionally draining on both partners. And when the process doesn’t take or produce the desired results, it must be repeated, taxing any woman and especially an athlete who continues to train and compete through it all.

Fortunately, for many of these athletes, maternity policies have begun to change for the better. Last year, the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) announced a landmark maternity fund granting eligible pregnant players 12 months of paid maternity leave and grants for fertility treatments, including egg freezing and IVF. The WNBA’s Breanna Stewart, a mother to two children, has been at the forefront of pushing to lower the league’s terms of service for when family benefits kick in so that players can start families at an earlier age. Having resources and support systems like these in place are especially important when you consider future population concerns stemming from declining fertility rates around the world, as women both wait longer to give birth and have fewer children.

We have come a long way in this journey, thanks to the athletes and coaches who have courageously used one of their most personal and life-changing moments – that of pregnancy and becoming a mom for the first time – to break stigmas and champion maternity rights and protections. And thanks to the institutions, brands and leagues that have supported athlete pregnancies and moms with both their words and their money.

The Milliat believes strongly in the value of research and data to raise awareness of issues in women’s sports and bring about change. One solution we envision in this context is a sports maternity database, which would comprise examples of pregnancies and motherhood in sports, create transparency around a topic that can often feel taboo and inspire people to be proactive about contributing to the betterment of the cause. More than anything, let’s continue to tell the stories of these women, celebrate their bravery and normalize pregnancy and motherhood in sports, setting an example for other professional sectors and cultures around the world.