I’ve just read a very interesting article on the upheaval that women cause when they take maternity leave on The Times‘ website.
Ordinarily I would have glazed my eyes over – yet another stab in the side of women who dare get pregnant during employment, but this article struck a cord with me because I have been in the same situation – twice. Basically getting pregnant early on in a new contract – and both have been a surprise to me and my colleagues!
When I fell pregnant with Joshua, my eldest, I had done two home pregnancy tests which came out negative. Then when my period hadn’t arrived, I actually went to the hospital twice to have a pregnancy test because I was never late with periods (not A and E, so don’t worry!). I had started feeling very peculiar in myself, but even eight weeks into the pregnancy, somehow the results of the second test still came back negative. I was soon offered a job and accepted, thinking that there was something strange going on health-wise, but basically just waiting for things to return back to normal.
My sudden obsession with gherkins should have been a dead giveaway – with salad at lunch and dinner, and then it was like, ‘forget the small portions, I want to eat a whole jar of gerkins’ …
Anyway, I thought there was something seriously wrong with me when the ‘red flag’ hadn’t shown up. So it was on the third visit to the hospital that the doctor said the words : “I’m pleased to tell you that you are pregnant…”. I was in the room with my mum at this point, who was naturally beaming… the shock made me speechless.
By now I had just started a new job, my husband was int he last phase of his accountancy course, and we were renting from a landlord who wouldn;t let us put shelves up because his subsidence-ridden flat was too precious. I could just see the look of disdain on his face if we were to introduce a child into the flat – vomit on the faded carpets, crayon marks on the magnolia walls… eviction notices flashed through my mind’s eye.
Then there was the ‘what am I going to tell my colleagues?’ thought. I felt embarrassed. For a while… then as my THEN size eight body started to expand, and I was still not ready to share my happy news, I wen into conspiracy mode – trying to cover up what people couldn’t see.
When I eventually broke the news to my boss, she took it very well, and so did the rest of the team. I planned to take no more than six months maternity leave – I felt too guilty to take longer, and with no maternity pay but the dismal maternity allowance, we basically needed me to be back at work in some capacity, especially since we then decided to add even more pressure on ourselves to buy a house so that we could start family life with the freedom to do what we wanted to the baby’s nursery without a disgruntled landlord having a seizure!
So, then came the thinking about returning to work – I’m one of those people who does not like to ‘see how it goes’. I needed to know how I was going to manage a child plus work. I spoke to my union about flexible working, and she helped me apply for it. I thought I would get one, two days max working from home. But I ended up being given the option to work from home almost full time, just coming into the office when my journals were going to press. FANTASTIC!!
But after that decision was made, our departmental director stopped speaking to me. I would walk past her in the corridor, smile and start saying “hello…” before realising on more occasions than necessary that she was blanking me on purpose!
I started asking around and no one wanted to tell me…but eventually I heard that she was upset because the decision to give me so much flexibility, she felt, would set a precedence in the department. Oops… but then, it wasn’t my decision to be so flexible, I’d left the number of days open on the advice of my union rep…
Anyway, role forward four years, and a similar thing happens in a different setting. I was on a fixed-term contract while the website was growing… I knew I wanted to start trying for another child before the age gap got too ridiculous like that between my siblings (eight and 10 years!), but I hadn’t bargained on getting pregnant so soon – I can remember the day of conception!
I guess this time because I was on a short-term contract which came to an end bang on my maternity leave I didn’t feel guilty at all. In fact my last day was on a Monday and Priscilla was born on the Friday, so it was a very close shave!
I didn’t feel guilty until a colleague dropped “so, you’ve basically been pregnant for most of your contract…” on me. I hadn’t even looked at it like that.
Like I said, my story is very similar to a lot of those that get horrific comments. But even now, as I sit writing my memoirs, I refuse to feel guilty. Women have a right to have children, and leave the gap as wide or as short as we need to. I’m not suggesting anyone do this, but I know someone who fell pregnant in the last month of her maternity leave (the 11th month to be precise) and was all set to return but had to call her line manager and share the happy news that she would be extending her maternity leave for another year (well, 13 months).
I know that taking maternity leave for a year can cause more work for colleagues, but that is life. If someone is off sick for months on end, we deal with it – even if they are taking biscuit with “stress-related illness” that doesn’t really exist. And when they come back to work, they get the cotton-wool treatment, are given an even smaller workload until they feel like they can cope… Going on maternity leave is a necessity if the human race is to exist.
It’s a fact of nature and the real world, so making women feel like they’ve stolen a kidney won’t help the situation. It’s not like we actually get paid for a year like some of our European cousins (Sweden and Norway). And for all we contribute to the economy and for all our National Insurance contributions, the statutory minimum fully paid maternity leave is a measly six weeks, followed by a slap-in-the-face maternity allowance that makes couples struggle, let alone single parents. Oh and this whole thing about employers forking out all that money paying for maternity leave, they get the money back from HMRC anyway. Recruitment costs are just a fact of life!
I get that retraining a replacement is an inconvenience, but don’t we just get on with it when someone leaves the company anyway? Come on!
Again, I say that I have no guilt at all, and I sure as hell don’t think the UK maternity leave and pay we get is enough for mums to be considered greedy.
Period.
