Chelsea have become the first Women’s Super League club to introduce fertility and player maternity policies, offering support intended to give members of their squad greater choice over family planning and motherhood.
The club has established a fertility fund with London clinic Fertility Plus. It is available to all players and can be used towards egg freezing, IVF, smear tests and contraception, alongside counselling and workshops.
The scheme is optional, with players able to access whichever elements they need. Chelsea said the aim is to provide information and support around fertility and wider gynaecological health, rather than prescribe a particular course of action.
The player maternity policy includes tailored support during pregnancy and post-natal recovery, financial assistance for a partner or nanny to travel to away fixtures for up to a year after a player returns to football, enhanced adoption and parental leave, wage support and subsidised childcare.
Chelsea head coach Sonia Bompastor said the policies should help players avoid having to choose between their careers and starting a family.
“Every player is different, every individual is different, they have a different journey and you can make a choice based on what you know and what is available for you,” she said.
“You don’t have to choose anymore between your professional career and your personal life being a mum. Now, both are possible.”
How Chelsea’s fertility and maternity policies will work
Former Chelsea goalkeeper Carly Telford, now the women’s team’s commercial manager, led the club’s work with Fertility Plus. She said the intention was to find a provider that understood the demands placed on elite athletes while also offering broader support for women’s health.
“I wanted to find a fertility clinic that offered more than just egg freezing and more than just optional things, but to give choices around hormones, endometriosis, cycle tracking, testing – something all-encompassing around the female body,” Telford said.
She added that the players’ decisions would remain private, with information shared confidentially between Fertility Plus clinicians and Chelsea’s medical staff.
“The players are feeling very comfortable with it and then how they act upon that based on their own individual needs,” Telford said.
Chelsea were also the first club in the world to track menstrual cycles, a programme introduced by former manager Emma Hayes in February 2020 to examine how they might affect performance. The new policies represent a further expansion of the club’s work around female players’ health.
Bompastor, who has four children with Chelsea assistant coach Camille Abily, said her own playing career had been shaped by having limited information and few visible options around pregnancy and elite sport.
“I wanted to have a really good career as a player and I decided to carry on and to finish maybe a little bit earlier than what I should have done because I also wanted to become a mum and have a family,” she said.
“With the knowledge I had in that moment and everything that was available for me, I thought it was almost the only way for me to do that.”
She said returning to high-level sport after having a child presented questions that were difficult to answer, including how an athlete could care for a baby while continuing to compete.
“Also, giving the support to players after having a baby. They need that because when you are a high-level athlete and you become a mum, those are two full-time jobs and you need that support to be able to do both at your best level,” Bompastor said.
Chelsea have previously had pregnant players in their squad. Melanie Leupolz had a baby in 2022 before returning to play for the club, while goalkeeper Zecira Musovic moved back to Sweden in June 2025 before giving birth later that year. Former captain Millie Bright also announced her pregnancy after retiring from playing earlier this year.
No Chelsea player has indicated publicly that she intends to use the new resources, and Telford stressed that such decisions should remain personal. She said, however, that the squad had responded positively after the leadership group was briefed.
Telford hopes Chelsea’s approach will encourage other clubs, sporting organisations and businesses to consider women’s health more broadly.
“We want to be followed for the things we’re doing around the team that have a wider impact when it comes to women in general and that’s the impact that our sport has,” she said.
“I would have loved to have known more about my body for lots of different reasons while I was playing – how I get the best out of it as an athlete, what it’s like during menstruation, what it’s like in terms of longevity of my cycle and fertility and what that looks like moving forward.”
