A Working Mom's Job Begins Before Baby

You know those women who plan out their lives and everything goes pretty much according to schedule? Well, I’m not one of them. I thrive in chaos and prefer my “schedules” - if I have them at all - to be loose.

It made perfect (but painful) sense, therefore, that my first pregnancy didn’t follow any conventional plan. Tucker’s birth was made possible by a patient medical team and years of infertility treatments to address an “unknown cause.” (Somehow the cause corrected itself, yielding more three more children in six years, the much more fun way).

Because Tucker’s conception was long in coming, my husband Bob and I were cautious to reveal the news. Conveniently, I didn’t show for a while, so it was easy to conceal. At the time, I was working for a questionably qualified VP whose goal was to replace the highly qualified (and high performing) management team of my peers and me with new, more compliant players. A perfect opportunity to replace me came when I was offered a promotion to a fabulous regional job under a leader I would have loved to work for – but that required 50% travel. My boss was ecstatic at the prospect of being rid of me, but I couldn’t take the job - and I wouldn’t say why. After an aggressive interrogation, I came clean and admitted that I couldn’t take a job that required a lot of air travel because I was pregnant. My boss, equal parts apoplectic and suspicious, ordered me to open up my suit jacket to prove it.

You can’t make this stuff up.

That was the mid-90s. A decade later, things weren’t much better for my now business partner, Kelley. She was a star teacher in a competitive New York metropolitan school district when she became pregnant with her first son, Charlie. After withholding the news as long as she could, she approached her principal for a requested meeting and, before a word had left her mouth, was confronted with ire and sarcasm: “Am I about to get morning sickness, Kelley?”

Maternity leave planning doesn’t begin when you leave work; it begins when you tell your boss you’re pregnant - and after you've thoughtfully planned how you'll do it. Neither Kelley nor I thoughtfully planned out that conversation and the way it went down set the tone for months of challenges at work, and more challenges – beyond the customary ones of crying baby, healing body, and sleeplessness – during our time at home. Ultimately, we both left those jobs and our employers lost two star performers.

Undeterred, we each went on to have more children and, as entrepreneurs, to create the workplace we’d wished we had. Together and separately, we’ve coached countless women through the challenges of maternity leave and working motherhood, and our wisdom and practical advice is conveniently packaged in a self-paced online course called Maternity Leave: Plan It So You Can Enjoy It.

We know from personal and professional experience that your job as a working mother begins before your baby is born. The best and only way to ensure a maternity leave that meets the needs of your baby, your colleagues, your clients and YOU is to plan it. Here are the ten essential steps in doing so:

1. Research and know your legal rights and earned benefits

2. Confidently and strategically announce your pregnancy to your manager*, colleagues and clients/customers

3. Collaborate with your team and your manager to develop, document and test a detailed work coverage plan

4. Agree on a schedule for staying engaged during your leave

5. Identify all of your home-life demands and create a plan for how (and if) those demands will be met when you return to work

6. Build and tap into your support system

7. Develop a realistic and sustainable personal wellness plan

8. Educate yourself about flexible re-entry and long-term flexible work options

9. Set and honor meaningful work and life boundaries

10. Create new ways to stay in the game and continue to promote yourself

This list is the backbone of a successful maternity leave. Kelley and I could have really used it back in the days of managers who harassed with impunity. Thanks to the hard work of our generation, however, the workplace has evolved. When it comes to pregnancy and maternity leave, today’s managers have legal boundaries and today’s new moms have institutional protections. This list makes sure they are followed.