Chelsea have become the first Women's Super League club to introduce formal fertility and player maternity policies, a move that gives their squad paid leave, personalised pregnancy support and dedicated medical care on the way back to playing. The club told Sky Sports about both programmes this weekend.
It is not the first time Chelsea have gone first on something that happens away from the pitch. In February 2020, under Emma Hayes, they became the first club in the world to track players' menstrual cycles and study how those cycles affect performance. The new policies are the next step along the same line of thinking.
What is actually on offer
The fertility side runs through a partnership with Fertility Plus, one of London's leading fertility clinics, and takes the form of a fund every player can access. It covers egg freezing, IVF, smear tests and contraception, along with counselling and workshops. Nothing about it is compulsory; players use as much or as little of it as they want.
The maternity policy is broader. It includes personalised pregnancy and post-partum recovery support, financial help for a partner or a nanny to travel to away fixtures for up to a year after a player returns, enhanced adoption and parental leave, wage support and subsidised childcare. That last cluster is the part that turns a statement of intent into something a player can actually plan a life around.
Bompastor: "You don't have to choose anymore"
Sonia Bompastor speaks about this from experience. The Chelsea head coach has four children with her partner, Chelsea assistant coach Camille Abily, and she believes she retired earlier than she needed to because, at the time, she could not see another route.
"When I reflect on my own story and experience, I didn't really have the choice," she told Sky Sports. "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 added that the questions that used to have no good answers were not only about pregnancy itself: "How can you look after your kid when you are an athlete and you play at the highest level? All these things were really difficult questions for me and I didn't have all the answers."
Her summary of what the club is trying to do is short. "You don't have to choose anymore between your professional career and your personal life being a mum. Now, both are possible."
Telford wanted more than egg freezing
Carly Telford, the former Chelsea goalkeeper who is now commercial manager for the women's team, led the work with Fertility Plus and was specific about what she was looking for. "I wanted to find someone that understood us as athletes first, but also understood us as women and what that comes with," she said. She wanted a clinic offering "choices around hormones, endometriosis, cycle tracking, testing — something all-encompassing around the female body", not a single service.
No player has said publicly that they intend to use either programme, and Telford was clear that any information stays between the doctors at Fertility Plus and the club's own medical staff. What she has heard from the squad, through friendships that survive from her playing days, is that the feedback has been good and that players feel comfortable with it.
Chelsea have had pregnant players before. Melanie Leupolz had a baby in 2022 and returned to play for the club; Zecira Musovic moved back to Sweden in June 2025 and gave birth later that year. Former captain Millie Bright, who retired earlier this year, recently announced her pregnancy. Telford's point is that the players now in their thirties are, she hopes, the last group who had to put those decisions on hold.
She wants the effect to reach past the squad. "If we can make businesses, other football clubs and other sports think differently around their women, that is what we want to do," she said, adding that the league and the FA should be looking at the same questions.
Club business context: Chelsea are the first WSL club to introduce fertility and player maternity policies, announced to Sky Sports on Sunday 27 September 2026. The fertility fund is run with Fertility Plus and covers egg freezing, IVF, smear tests, contraception, counselling and workshops. The maternity policy covers paid leave, pregnancy and post-partum support, travel funding for a partner or nanny for up to a year after a return to play, enhanced adoption and parental leave, wage support and subsidised childcare. Chelsea were also the first club in the world to track menstrual cycles, introduced by Emma Hayes in February 2020.
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