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Today, in partnership with the Queensland government, the AIS and Central Queensland University, we announce a world-leading athlete wellbeing project, which is the Parenthood Recommendations.

These recommendations give sporting organisations of all sizes an evidence-based guide  from preconception to parenthood.

My name is Jasmine Titova. I'm a PhD candidate from CQUniversity and the Australian Institute of Sport, and my research investigated the challenges that elite athletes face during preconception and pregnancy and developed best practice recommendations to help sporting organisations support them better.

My name's Boden (Tighe). I'm a higher research degree candidate with Central Queensland University, in partnership with the Queensland Academy of Sport.

The impact I'm hoping to see is that we have our athletes return and be successful. So, they come back from having a child and win those gold medals.

Hi, I'm Mel Hayman from CQUniversity Australia and I'm an associate professor for health sciences.

So I was a recreational athlete myself. I fell pregnant with my first child, and I had some really conflicting advice and I wasn't sure what to do or what I could and couldn't do.

And that really, I guess, was the foundational motivation and inspiration for establishing two partnerships, one with the Queensland Academy of Sport and the other with the Australian Institute of Sport, to help  drive research so that we could aim to address some of those research gaps, so that our athletes at the end of the day have a greater chance of being involved  in sport and staying in sport for longer.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of myths about what athletes can and can't do. So, historically, athletes were essentially told to go home and rest and just do nothing until they gave birth. And now, we know that being physically active is actually a very good thing during pregnancy.  And a lot of these athletes can train right up until they give birth. And of course, they modify their training as appropriate, with supervision, but yeah, they're staying quite fit and that obviously helps them with their return later.

So, I trained right through my pregnancy. I was in gym the morning I went into labor, which this time round feels crazy to me!

We were able to um make some really cool findings and some really cool improvements through my pregnancy and I did a personal best at 35 weeks or something, postpartum, and was able to have some of my best results of my career.

I was excited for this journey being pregnant to train all the way, and I was just in the pool an hour ago, training, pool running, and keeping my fitness levels as high as possible so that this return will be a little easier. And I've really enjoyed this pregnancy for that reason. I think when you're feeling awful  or you've got morning sickness, getting out the door and even just doing a little bit of light exercise has been a savior for me. Definitely.

Why hasn't been this been done before? It seems so simple, yet it hasn't been. We've only recently seen an increase in female athletes competing not  only whilst pregnant but also postpartum and returning and returning successfully.

On the pregnancy side, pretty much everyone I spoke to had no idea what needed to be considered, who needed to be involved and when it needed to be considered during when managing a pregnant athlete. So even sports physicians had no formal training whatsoever on pregnancy for elite athletes. So they were left to figure it out on their own.

Thank you to Central Queensland University and most importantly, thank you to the incredible women who are here today redefining what athletes are capable of.

There's a research study coming out hopefully soon on my whole journey through pregnancy and postpartum. And one thing we did learn was that yeah, I guess all the extra... I'm not a scientist! But all the extra juices flowing really helped me make some really good strength gains and some other really cool learnings as well. So, I'm excited for that to come out.

It's a no-brainer really. Athletes should be able to be athletes as well as moms. And I think that the more that we can do to support that transition, the better off we are, which means that we not only see more of our athletes, but the athletes see an opportunity to be involved as  not just athletes, but also as moms, and bring on Brisbane 2032 because I guarantee you that there will be more female athletes who are also moms  than I imagine ever before, not just in Australia, but globally because these recommendations really  are game changers um from a global perspective.