When I found out I was pregnant I was, and still am, very happy and excited. However, I was also anxious – I’m sure that’s not a new phenomenon for expectant Mum’s, there are a lot of potential things to worry about after all. The immediate one on my mind though, was how will work react & how much is my career going to suffer? I spent the next six weeks endeavouring not to let fatigue & morning sickness interfere with my life & the quality of my work whilst this nagging doubt sat in the back of my mind regarding how this was going to affect my working life.
One 12 week scan later and I told my boss the news. In terms of immediate reaction I really needed have worried. I got a wonderfully positive response that even ended with him spending twenty minutes chatting about the best local places to shop for baby gear. Once he’d told the MD I had a similar reaction from him – he even sought me out to give me his congratulations and a little pep talk about how great kids are & how much my husband & I were going to enjoy being parents. I breathed a massive sigh of relief as the first of my worries were over. Work now knew I was pregnant and had received the information with open arms & smiles…it had been almost like telling uncles rather than employers. I even silently admonished myself for having such a chip on my shoulder that I’d assumed things would go badly.
One 20 week scan later though, and sadly I’m beginning to think that my first thoughts were the accurate ones. Yes everyone has been lovely and caring, asking me how things are going & whether we’ve decorated the nursery yet. But…ah, there’s always a ‘but’…it took over a month, and a significant amount of chasing for me to be able to sit down with a H&S rep & go through my ‘New & Expectant Mothers Risk Assessment’. The RA raised actions, after several days of waiting I’ve been told that it will be at least 2 weeks till any action can/will be taken. I’ve also waited for over a month to sit down with someone from HR to talk about the Maternity Policy…I’m still waiting and the meeting has been postponed 3 times now for ‘more urgent matters’.
The thing that concerns me most though, is that despite a plethora of small projects being in existence in the office currently – most of which will finish before I am due to go on maternity leave – I am not the lead engineer on any. I was told I needed to be lead engineer on a small project before I could be promoted…before I got pregnant I was told I would be given the opportunity to do this as soon as an appropriate project arose, there are now several. The other objective I had to meet in order to be promoted was to do some specialist training. The company rejected all my suggestions and put forward their own, which is fine by me, it’s an interesting area but it really is *very* specialist. This means that the company has been unable to source any training on it, and I have only been able to find one course myself. The course takes place in mainland Europe when I’m 30 weeks pregnant (some airlines stop you flying at 26-28 weeks, but many are fine up to 36 weeks, and there is always the Eurostar), and in the brief time my manager has found to talk to me about this he has said he doesn’t want me travelling at that stage. So there is very little possibility of me being able to complete that objective & I’ve already been told there is no option of changing to a different specialism. Alongside all this my manager, alike HR & H&S, is apparently too busy to be able to sit down with me and discuss my future career progression. I’m hoping that now the holiday period is drawing to a close that all these folk will be freer to discuss my future with me, because right now I feel very much like a persona non grata. And looking around the office…none of the engineers are Mums – this does not bode well.
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