Completing Your Summer Internship While Pregnant — A Conversation with Allegra Asplundh
MBA Mama Guest Blog // written by: Allegra Asplundh, Class of 2017 at UT-Austin McCombs School of Business
I was not visibly pregnant during recruiting. I shared the news with my school community and summer employer in March of my first year so I had gone through the winter recruiting cycle and accepted an offer.
By that point, I was showing so it was a bit anti-climactic. Folks at school were like, “That’s great, so happy for you, but we’ve known for weeks.”
I loved my summer experience, but it was certainly presented some unique challenges. You try and turn some of the superficial ones into fun things. Take maternity clothes for example. I had no idea how I would dress in business formal attire at 8-months pregnant. Luckily, I am blessed with a stylish mother who researched all the working-woman maternity lines for me. It’s a small example, but those outfits made a difference in my confidence.
I remember placing some urgent Zappos orders a few days before the internship’s start date because my feet were too swollen to fit into any of my shoes.
Honestly, physical discomfort was the toughest part of my internship.
One cool thing about being pregnant in a new work environment is that it gives people a point of connection, an easy way to start a conversation with you. I think successful women in finance embrace the fact that we stand out just by virtue of being in the minority. Sure, that can be burdensome but the flipside is our voices carry weight. Our contributions stand out. And pregnancy simply heightens that phenomenon.
The culture of MBA internships (especially those in finance) is heavy on face time and long hours. I had to step away from work for doctor’s appointments and simply couldn’t put in the long hours like most of my peers. So then the question became: how do I demonstrate my interest and commitment in other ways? And that gets back to creating connection with people, and of course, performing well during the hours and days that you have.
Now that I am back on campus and have delivered my son, I can say that there is nothing — no advice, book, or past experience — that prepared me for the passage into parenthood. I remember looking down at Winslow after he was born and thinking, “I can’t believe you’re mine! Are you sure you’re my baby?”
I spent the first few weeks of his life learning how to be a parent alongside my husband. It’s pretty much a constant rotation of nursing and changing diapers. And of trying to figure out what is making him cry! Win is at a stage now where his face is so expressive, and I love to sit with him and marvel at his grins and scowls.
Win is one month old, and this coming week will be my first full week back in classes. I’m looking forward to it. I love the intellectual absorption of student life. This semester I’m taking a lighter course load, and my husband will be the more full-time parent.
It was difficult to negotiate a maternity leave through McCombs. I was routed through the Students with Disabilities Office and asked to provide a doctor’s note.
Several professors discouraged me from taking their classes since I would miss the start of the semester. It was clear in going through the process that there wasn’t much of a precedence for what I needed. The overwhelming model of parenthood in business school is still one of fathers having kids and returning to class almost immediately.
I hope that as we tell our MBA mama stories, we help our schools understand that supporting mothers isn’t rocket science, but it does require infrastructure, processes in place and the willingness of professors to work with students.
I am still so new at this motherhood/MBA student gig, and we will see how my husband and I manage to make it work this semester. Already I’ve surrendered several of my ideas about the “right” way to be a mom to my son. At this point, my two goals are to surround Win with love (my own and that of other caregivers), and to get back to classes, graduate and start the career I’ve chosen, the career that will help support my family.
