The idea of a woman being active, pregnant or not, wasn't always considered normal, or even healthy. A 1912 article from Harper's Bazaar asked if "athletics [are] a menace to motherhood," and less than 75 years later, "Can Sports Make You Sterile?" In 1985, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists published its first guidelines for exercise during pregnancy and advised that women be conservative about movement and avoid bringing their heart rates up. Just three years ago, famed marathoner Paula Radcliffe said it was hard to respond to people who asked her if she was "shaking the baby to death" when she ran during her pregnancy.

Today, though, adverse effects of activity on a pregnant person's body have been negated so thoroughly that researchers have shifted their focus to other areas. Dr. James Pivarnik, director of the Center for Physical Activity and Health at Michigan State, and his colleagues are now examining just how much exercise benefits a pregnant person with regard to diseases like pregnancy-induced hypertension and gestational diabetes. Overall, Pivarnik worries more about everyday women who believe that they, too, can (or should) train like an Olympic athlete while with child.

"People at that level are just different," he says. "Their bodies respond better to training and they can do so much more than the average person physically and psychologically, that pregnancy becomes a mild physiologic distraction. Most of us can only dream of being that skilled, pregnant or not."

Pivarnik also worries about whether pregnant athletes will receive support--not body pillows or a chaise longue, but social support. "These athletes have the same concerns as you and I who aren't going to work out when it's snowing," he says. "It can also be difficult for them in terms of financial ability or having a partner and family to help. But because it's the Olympics they have to figure it out."

Hannah Storm, the director of Swoopes and long-time sports journalist, says having that social support was crucial for Sheryl Swoopes in 1997. Storm chronicled the first years of the WNBA up close as the league's first play-by-play announcer. According to Storm, the league and media were surprised when Sheryl made her announcement, but eventually shrugged it off. "She was coming off this gold-medal win at the Olympics and was such a big star at Nike that it never really occurred to anybody she could get pregnant," Storm says. "But she was and everybody just had to deal." Instead of sulking that its star had performed a natural, biological function without permission, the WNBA decided to market Sheryl as an everyday mom--a convenient hook for the league's effort to peg itself a kid-and-family-friendly outlet. The network filmed her pregnant and shared her progress in promotional material for the WNBA and, more importantly, Houston Comets coach Van Chancellor made it possible for Swoopes to reintegrate herself into the team dynamic just six weeks after giving birth.