Starting a new job while pregnant
I decided to leave one stress, without realizing I’d be taking on another. I intend this to be a sort-of? blog series chronicling my pregnancy/maternity leave.
I am part of the 40 percent of the American workforce who doesn’t quality for job-protected maternity leave under the Family Leave and Medical Act. At 16 weeks pregnant, I left my job at a little non-profit. I hadn’t even realized I had wanted to leave until I was pregnant. The people were (mostly) great, but the job stressed me out and the commute was wearing me down. I had dreams where I was in meetings and I was unprepared. I had a panic attack one night and I couldn’t sleep at all. I worried about the health of my unborn baby, because I was so stressed all the time. When I told the HR director I was leaving, she said, “But you won’t quality for FMLA at your new job! What are you going to do?”
What was I going to do? My old job didn’t offer paid maternity leave, either, so I wasn’t missing out on that. When offered the new job, I promptly told them I was pregnant. They didn’t seem taken aback. But I wanted to know whether I’d be eligible for some sort of maternity leave, given that I wouldn’t qualify for the 12 weeks of job-protected leave. I tried to lay out all the maternity leave options out in the open, but it was difficult to really ascertain what those options would be.
The HR specialist I spoke to said that colleagues he knew took eight weeks of leave, using short-term disability. Short-term disability, in the case of pregnancy, is meant for your body healing from childbirth. Typically, short-term disability insurance covers part of your salary — six weeks for a vaginal birth, eight weeks for a C-section. But eight weeks of leave is barely enough time to heal from childbirth, let alone bond with your new baby. Hearing the panic in my voice, he reassured me that his colleague who took 12 weeks of leave (she was covered under FMLA) said not to worry about it. The company was very accommodating and flexible for working parents. Granted, this guy was part of the Talent Recruitment team, so he really wanted to close the deal. I didn’t feel like I had much of a choice at that point, though — I had one foot at the door at my old job, and I hoped (believed) I could do interesting work at this new place. I took the plunge and accepted the job.
I did a lot of Google searching, and talked to a couple of friends who had gone on maternity leave, but I’ve felt alone in this whole process of figuring out what was the right thing to do. Maternity leave in this country sucks. The United States is the only developed country in the world that doesn’t offer paid time off to new parents. I don’t know why we as a culture promote work, work, work, so much, yet do so little to ensure that people can actually come back to work after having a child.
My husband was and is incredibly supportive, but sometimes I feel so overwhelmed I still want to cry — and I’m at this new, supposedly less stressful job! I worry about our finances while I’m on unpaid leave. I worry about the job I’ll leave behind, unprotected. (Although others have reassured me, saying it would be a pretty jerk move and not exactly good for employee retention if I were fired while I was on maternity leave. Still.) I worry about being able to take the time I want and need to be with my new baby. I worry about care options for her once I have to go back to work. Daycare is incredibly expensive in D.C.
I feel like my impending maternity leave is a perpetual “elephant in the room” at work. I’ve taken some small steps to protect myself, like applying for short-term disability (fortunately, pregnancy is not a pre-existing condition under the insurance policy I have, but that’s not the case with all of these) and hospital indemnity insurance. When the time gets a bit closer to my due date, and when I’ve established myself a bit more at my job, I’m going to talk to my supervisor about my maternity leave options.
Next: I tried to talk to my supervisor about maternity leave.
