How to Set Good Boundaries Around Your Maternity Leave

Female founders and CEO’s discuss tips for setting up boundaries and managing expectations.

My third child is due in December, but in a sense, this is my first maternity leave. With my sons, I was not responsible for anyone else’s paycheck. I was a solo consultant and closed out most of my existing contracts to coincide with the births. With my first baby, I took six months off. I went “back” to work when my second was two weeks old, wrapping him up in a Moby wrap to go on trips, but I made my home office a nursery too.

I want to have a well-adjusted third child and still bring home the bacon.

Now I run a small professional services firm and I have responsibilities to my team — and of course to my kids. I want to have a well-adjusted third child and still bring home the bacon.

I know no client would ever knowingly begrudge me time off, but work needs to get done. It’s tempting to pull a Marissa Mayer and say, “Don’t worry, I’ll only be gone two weeks,” but I’m no Marissa Mayer! Like many aspects of work in our hyperconnected age, expectations of boundaries have shifted for maternity leaves. I’m finding it unusual these days to meet a new mother who remains totally disconnected for her entire leave. That’s cool: Everyone has their own work-life fit and different considerations to work around. Some women don’t want to disconnect, and some may feel anxiety about job security when disappearing. Everyone has her own work-life fit. But still, I was curious how women could set strong intentions and establish good boundaries around leave.

To that end, I asked some incredibly accomplished women how they managed expectations around maternity leave, whether self-employed or in a corporate setting. I also asked them how they communicated their planned availability and set reasonable boundaries while also ensuring their teams and clients were in good hands. Here’s what they said.

Like many aspects of work in our hyperconnected age, expectations of boundaries have shifted for maternity leaves.

Sara Holoubek of Luminary Labs has shares her multi-tiered approach to how CEOs can disconnect during leave here. In addition to the steps she maps out, which includes introducing her pregnancy as a “‘new project,’ of which I would be the scrum master” she told me: “I actually sent our largest client a “sprint plan” of which I would be the scrum master. We took a very considered approach to how the company would operate while I was at home. I didn’t step into the office for nearly 3 months, and not only did the company survive, it matured in my absence.” She also planned a two-week vacation a few months before her due date so her company management could her “pilot” maternity leave.

Allyson Downey, founder of WeeSpring took a slightly different approach:

I agonized over this when it was time to tell our investors I was pregnant. I decided to include it as a cheery last section in one of my general investor update emails.

In follow up conversations, I explained that my co-founder was going to be taking the reins while I was on “maternity leave” (and I almost always referred to it in quotes, because I wanted to signal I wasn’t going dark).

After Caroline was born, I put on an out of office saying I was going to be offline as we welcomed a new baby into our family (intentionally vague on length of time), and directed them to email my co-founder.

I checked email about once a day so I could keep an eye out for things that actually needed my attention. If an email came in from someone important, I responded within 24 hours or so (but they’d seen my out of office, so they knew I’d just had a baby; it was a good way to manage expectations).

Here’s how Danah Boyd, Microsoft Research and author of It’s Complicated managed:

I approached my pending maternity leave in the same way that I approach my email sabbaticals. I reached out to all relevant parties as soon as I was willing to be public with the news and basically said: “At some point around X date, I will disappear for an unknown amount of time. I want to make sure that our collaborations stay intact. How can I prepare in advance for the combination of inevitable and uncertain?” And then we strategized. I came away from each core conversation with a formal execution plan, including work that I’d do in advance, how we’d cope when I disappeared, and what “emergency” protocols looked like. For key partnerships, I agreed to be quasi available in case of emergency, but I also created a series of backup people who were willing to step in as needed. I prepared for total uncertainty. In reality, I was able to (and, frankly, wanted to) do around one to two hours worth of email a day in the first few weeks. I kept my away message bounce on, but used that time to help out key collaborators.

The other thing that I did which was very helpful was full on admit uncertainty. Hell, I did it publicly and questioned why people felt the need to judge every woman for her choices.

I‘d like to close with words of wisdom from two accomplished women who’ve mentored and invested in many successful women over the years.

Investor Joanne Wilson: “Do not fret, do not justify, do not agonize. Just state the case. It is what it is and for anyone to question your ability to continue to grow your business and do your job- those people are out of line.”

Ruth Ann Harnisch, President, The Harnisch Foundation: “Pregnancy gives an applicant the opportunity to show off her strategic planning skills, her ability to think ahead and plan accordingly, her sense of humor and flexibility. It can be a WINNING strategy.”

So whatever terms you set around your leave, perhaps the best case scenario is that it’s your choice, and your intention.

Morra Aarons-Mele is the founder of digital marketing firm Women Online and its influencer database, The Mission List. She has covered events from the White House to the campaign trail in her role as a blogger on women, politics, and work. She has taught at the Yale Women’s Campaign School, the Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and at the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders forum, as well as at the Johns Hopkins Graduate School of Communication. She lives in Boston.