Just because you have a baby doesn’t mean you’re past it on the pitch, insists Louise
GAA star and former rugby international Louise Galvin has revealed her relief at being able to overcome doubters and return to sport after her pregnancy.
But the Kerry ladies football player, who has also represented Ireland in basketball, said ‘there’s still a long way to go’ before new mothers returning to sport becomes the norm.
The two-time World Cup player – in rugby 7s and 15s – said she ‘would have got a few comments’ doubting whether she would be able to return to sport as a mother.
She told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘It’s nice to kind of challenge that status quo or that image that’s there.’
But she added: ‘There’s a long way to go before women can go have a baby, come back and still play, without the fear of people assuming they’re done and past it and going into early retirement or whatever. I think the more women that break down those barriers and look for more of these published guidelines
‘It’s nice to challenge that status quo’
[around returning to sport], the better, to make it seem like it’s expected as opposed to an unusual occurrence.’
The Kerry star returned to training 10 weeks after giving birth to her son Florian 10 months ago.
Ms Galvin, a physiotherapist, said there is a shortage of research and information available to pregnant women about sport and exercise. She recommended that active pregnant women visit a women’s health physiotherapist – who will ‘understand the obstetric and gynaecological side of it, but also the sport and exercise side of it’.
She told the MoS: ‘In the HSE, unless you have major complications, that wouldn’t be covered. In hospital, it’s all about delivering the baby. Once you’re safe and you don’t have an infection or blood loss and you can walk, that’s where the treatment stops.’
The 35-year-old said she ‘massively modified’ her activity levels during pregnancy, but still walked two hours a day and took up swimming.
She called her pregnancy ‘pretty uneventful’ (though it culminated in a Caesarean section) and said she was ‘pretty fit for labour and recovered pretty well’.
‘I put that down to having a good baseline fitness and trying to maintain that through pregnancy,’ she said.
‘The days of people putting their feet up or being told to do that – obviously in complicated pregnancies it’s different – but in uncomplicated pregnancies those days should be gone.
‘Even the baby’s equipment and everything – you have to have a certain level of strength and fitness to be able to lift it.’
A lifetime in prime physical condition meant Galvin ‘had that foundation’ to get back into sport with relative comfort.
For less active people, it is even more important to respond to the strains put on the body by pregnancy before going back to sport or exercise.
Physiotherapist Fiona Healy of The Bump Room – who offers live and online physio sessions and classes for pregnant and postnatal women – said she still gets, ‘women after their third pregnancy who wouldn’t have exercised much and they think they can just go off and run’.
‘You’re thinking, “Wait a second, you’re not strong enough”.’
Research shows more women are now running for exercise, which Ms Healy warned, ‘is an impact sport, so the body needs to be ready to take that impact’.
A Bump Room survey of almost a thousand post-partum women who run for exercise showed almost three-quarters (74%) had started running again after giving birth, with just 36% saying they had returned to prepregnancy levels of running. A ‘huge amount’ of respondents – 84% – reported musculoskeletal pain, which Ms Healy said ‘tends to be the lower half of the body, so a mixture of hip and pelvic pain, but even calf pain’.
According to the physiotherapist, 12 weeks is the recommended wait before returning to running, and she said postnatal women, ‘should start with squats, lunges, bridges from two weeks if everything’s going okay, definitely from four weeks post-natal’.
Their research shows women who run during pregnancy are more likely to get back sooner, and that ‘your casual runner is going to find it harder to get back to running’.
‘Body needs to be ready to take that impact’