In a recent piece with TIME magazine, Ashley V. Austin, MD, sports medicine physician at HSS, and Team Physician for the New York Liberty shares how sports medicine principles, especially strength training, pelvic floor and core work can help improve pregnancy and postpartum care. 

I treat professional athletes for a living.

I'm the primary care sports medicine doctor for the New York Liberty. As a former Division I athlete myself, I'm honored to remain connected to the sport I love—and treat some of the world's most elite players. I know I've been tasked with caring for a historically marginalized population at a time when the healthcare system is finally starting to value female athletes. I take this responsibility seriously—and coordinate care year-round for the team, treating everything from acute and chronic musculoskeletal injuries to sore throats and earaches. 

But after the birth of my second child, I found myself on the other side of the exam table—trying to manage diastasis recti, a postpartum condition where the abdominal muscles separate, causing pain and weakness.

Even with world-class care and clinical training, I'm still on the mend eight months later. That makes me one of the lucky ones. Most women don't have access to the resources I do and they're left navigating complex, often painful recoveries on their own.

The reality is pregnancy affects nearly every organ system, yet most women receive little to no guidance on how to protect or rebuild their health. Our healthcare system waits for problems and then scrambles to respond. It rarely works to prevent them.

We're long overdue for a shift to a proactive model of perinatal care—care that supports women before, during, and after pregnancy—and integrates musculoskeletal medicine, physical therapy, and nutrition.

Read the full article at time.com