Postpartum to personal best: Exploring return to elite sport and performance after childbirth

Elite athlete-mothers are a relatively under-researched athlete population due to longstanding sports culture attitudes that pregnancy indicated the end of an athlete’s career. The aim of this thesis was to explore the experiences of pregnancy and return to sport and performance postpartum. The first study was a literature review on pregnancy and the postpartum period in elite endurance athletes. The second study was a cross-sectional study exploring the experiences of pregnancy and return to sport and performance after childbirth in Canadian elite athletes. The review revealed that current knowledge on this athlete population is primarily at an exploratory level, hence the vagueness of resources available to pregnant and postpartum athletes. The survey revealed that despite facing various challenges, several athletes in our sample were able to return to competitive sport postpartum and even see improved performance. Together, these findings highlight the need for further research to better support athlete-mothers.