There's also the question of how to deal with early pregnancy. People usually don't want to announce a pregnancy publically before the 2rd trimester. But players usually wont play after they've found out. They do usually carry on training but sometimes at a lower capacity. What tends to happen is that a player is stated to have some nonspecific injury. There was a spate of players who had 'knee injuries' that were actually pregnancies, think Alex Morgan was one. Toni Duggan had a 'back inury' for her first 12 weeks.
There's an interesting article on pregnancy and female sportswomen at:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...cy-but-how-soon-should-they-test-their-limits
While most players stop playing competitively immediately, a lot of them carry on training but with modified training plans. It is a pretty new topic for sports scientists though, particularly in football.
In the amateur/semi-pro game women have always had children while playing and some have returned to playing football, sometimes international football, sometimes after several years absence.
It's only really since the women's pro club game started to take off in Europe that it's received much attention from the sporting technical or financial angle.
It's more generally been seen as something that might happen as players approach (football) retirement. So for most players in the English Pro/semipro game in recent years, it was a time to look at coaching badges or preparing/training for their post-football careers - with whatever financial or other support the club might be willing to give them.
