“But what is it for?”

My friend and I were catching up yesterday, and she wanted to more about the Pregnant Professional.

She was not a mother, and her jobs were not corporate. She’d mostly spent her career as an entrepreneur.

“I don’t really hear people talking about this as a problem. What is it that you are helping pregnant women do?”

Well, that’s exactly right. It doesn’t get talked about openly. But if you ask a woman if her pregnancy experience at work was simple, every woman throws up her hands.

“It’s so confusing!”

There are laws, and there are cultural morays–both corporate and regional.

No one is really on the side of the pregnant woman. Her family has one set of priorities.

Work definitely has another.

And very often, the woman and what SHE wants is lost in the shuffle. Including in her own mind.

What with the changes inside her body, her emotions and drives can seem strange.

But only the woman herself can know what she really wants. And only she can know if that core desire changes.

What the pregnant professional does is bring forth all the questions that need to be considered. The money, the ambition, the lifestyle and love goals all have to be taken into consideration so that a soli choice can be made.

And even when those choices must be made quickly, in the moment, those questions have already been considered and the data is at the top of your mind when you must choose.

There is nothing else like what I’ve created with the Pregnant Professional. I do not tell you what to do, I equip you so you can know what choice you want to make.

I guess people are excited. It IS exciting to think about a new life coming into the world.

But some people just want the gory details. They will ask if you have morning sickness. They will ask if you are swollen or constipated.

That’s not a side of myself I really want to share at work.

TMI

I have heard of people who feel that they can lay their hands on a pregnant woman’s stomach. That is not okay.

It’s almost like your body doesn’t belong to you anymore.

Well.

It does.

That’s why I recommend having a reply ready, and practiced so that you can deflect these inappropriate incursions:

“I”m doing the best I can. Thanks for asking.”

One of the thing professionals have to really pay attention to is
TIME

We have deadlines to meet. We have service level agreements, we have filing dates. We have response times, we have expectations.

Time is a non-renewable resource. Thank you for investing your time in reading this blogpost!

It’s a joke to say, after a tedious meeting “That’s an hour of my life I won’t get back!”

And it’s true.

Some hours are also more precious than others. Like the day I got married is a very precious experience and memory.

And your pregnancy, while often tedious, can be a precious time. It’s something you want to cherish.

The first time you hear your baby’s heartbeat is a big deal.

I want that to be free from external stresses and worries.

That’s why THe PRegnant Professional lays out the whole picture of what you need to expect for your career while pregnant, and what you will need from your job, so that you don’t have to worry about what you are missing.

I’ve got you covered.

Because I want you to be able to enjoy these first times. You can’t get them back

** first ever Q&A conference call this friday 3/17 at 1 PM pacific**
Dial-in Number:(712) 770-4010
Access Code:212496 PIN

I got to go to a birthday party this weekend. My daughter’s best friend’s younger sister was turning three.

I love this family’s parties. They invite so many people! There were newborns and great grandmothers.

Brothers and sisters and cousins and childhood friends and new friends–like me–were altogether eating cake and drinking sodas.

LIttle Miss Three was handing out ring pops like a queen dispensing largess.

All these people getting together to support one another touched me.

I don’t throw parties very often, and I don’t think I have that span of ages.

It’s a rich heritage to have people who remember you. And people that can give you advice and help you out when you aren’t sure what to do.

My friend has a a support network like that. I am lucky enough to be part of it.

Others don’t have that kind of network. And even if some of us do have a wide circle of people we could reach out to, we might not have the right sort of people to ask specific things.

Time changes what the cultural norms are.

My mother’s experience of working while pregnant was not the same as mine. She had a different kind of job, a different sort of boss.

For women in this new era, with new norms and expectations, I created the Pregnant Professional. This is meant to be a place where advice and reassurance can be found, in the moment of pregnancy during your career.

So this morning I got a call on my work cellphone. One of my team can’t show up today because of car trouble.

It happens.

We figured it out and things will be okay. There’s another guy who can fill in and we’ll get the boxes delivered and the install work done.

The guy whose car wouldn’t start felt really bad. I didn’t rub it in, I told him that I hoped his car would get fixed soon.

Like I said. It happens.

It happens often enough that you can’t even be surprised or upset when it happens.

What you have to do is have enough slack in the system that one or two hiccups won’t throw it all off.

That’s what I do for my Pregnant Professional tribe. What I do is help women look over their career and family landscape, look at what they want and what their resources are, and make their plans.

You know that saying?

If you want to make God laugh, make a plan?

I know that the plans people come up with are not foolproof. But when you have a plan, and have a good grasp on what your resources and options are, you can handle a hiccup.

Just like my little hiccup this morning. In the end, it all worked out beautifully.

That’s what I want for you, my Pregnant Professionals: smooth, panic-free career transition.

And it’s absolutely possible.

It’s Sunday morning, and daylight savings “Spring Forward” just happened. That’s the worst half of daylight savings.

I am not really affected by light or lack thereof. My mother is, and I know others are. When there is not enough daylight in their lives, they feel off. Perhaps this will help my mom feel happier in her day.

For me, daylight savings mostly messes up my delicate family schedule. It’s a very sensitive ecosystem of things that must be done at certain time, most particularly bedtime for my daughter Veronica. She requires a lot of help to get to sleep.

In a lot of ways, though, this is Sunday like any other. This is the day that I get stocked and loaded for the week.

Do I have laundry done so that I have the right things to wear? Are there particular events (meetings at work or events in the evening) that I need to have an outfit ready for?

What events will happen this week that I need to get supplies for, or do prep work on?

Do I have enough food for everyone’s meals this week? Are there other non-food items we are out of, like toothpaste or toilet paper? What different stores do I need to visit to get these?

And what windows of time in the weekend will that all get done? which parts of the day are already taken?

Because once I hid the pillow on Sunday night, whatever is undone will most likely STAY undone for the rest of the week.

Sure, I might be able to order a needed item for delivery from Amazon. I might have a chance to do a load of laundry during the week.

But mostly, if it hasn’t happened by Sunday night, it’s going to have to be done later.

This lends a certain pressure to half my weekend. Because I’d really love to lay around. And I know the cost of laying around too.

Somehow I always think I can do more than I actually can. I’d really love to weed the flower patch, but that has to come second behind the special homework assignment my daughter has (why are all homework assignments more work for the parents than for the kid?!) to turn in on Thursday.

And after we give the poor dog a bath. She’s been scratching, so I can’t tell if she has fleas or is just dirty. Probably both.

But it’s all got to be done on the ‘day of rest.’

That’s what it means to be a working woman. And especially a working mother.

Have you heard the Clean Bandit song “Rockabye”?

It’s about a single mother who has to strip (all the better for the video) to take care of her baby. And she is determined to take care of him.

No one’s ever gonna hurt you, love
I’m gonna give you all of my love
Nobody matters like you

Yes, yes. I know you all have that same determination in your hearts, to care for your children with all you’ve got.

And isn’t it fantastic that you make enough careful choices in your life that stripping isn’t your only option.

I honor that fictional woman in the song, doing what she must. And I with even greater respect, I honor my pregnant professional tribe here.

You thought it through. You piled up education, credentials and experience. You have a whole brain and a driving ambition to be more than merely a survivor.

For myself, I resisted motherhood until I had a secure spot to launch from. I knew it would be tough (what little I knew!), and I knew that I needed a solid solid ground to take care of myself as well as a little child.

I knew I wanted to work. I knew I had something to share with the world, and although motherhood was part of it, it would not be enough.

Like that phrase:
necessary but not sufficient.

We have ambitions to feed as well as tiny mouths.

Mad respect, my pregnant professionals.

Martyrdom is not required. We need empresses of our domains.

As I work to spread the message of The Pregnant Professional, I’ve been learning more and more about the need for this program. Every person I speak to is excited about the need for this program. Everyone shares more and more ways to spread the word and support my fellow women in their career choices.

This week I had the opportunity to get in front of some entrepreneurial businesswomen, all mothers. These women are dedicated to their families and on fire with ambition. Their commitment to their family and to themselves inspired me.

I was able to do a quick survey and the results truly amazed me. Yes, this was a self-selected group of entrepreneurial mothers, but when they shared their background and entrepreneurial origin stories I got a glimpse of the big picture about how their families motivate them in business.

Again and again I heard the story of how having a baby changed everything. More than 80% of the respondents said they changed their career path after the child was born.

I heard of women having very clear-cut goals for their lives, goals that had taken years of education and preparation. When their child was born, and these women held a little baby in their arms, an immediate shift happened.

The majority of the respondents said this new life unexpectedly shifted their plans and ambitions. They immediately began to re-route their life path so they could stay with the little one.

Doctors, accountants, and attorneys took one look at their baby and began planning how to do their work so they would not be pulled away from that child.

Not a single woman responded to say that her ambitions left her. More than 40% said that they were not willing to give up their autonomy, to have to choose what an employer demanded above what she felt her children needed.

One woman told how her three children had taken the place of a career in her life, but now that they were grown her ambitions were hotter than ever.

Another woman shared that she enjoyed being a working mom, it fit her life and her family and so that was her choice.

12% of the women shared that they had planned their career, even before having children, so that they could be the kind of mother they wanted to be. They chose careers that would allow them autonomy to choose their children.

They all agreed that their focus intensified after the child arrived, their ambitions took on bigger meaning.

I was so moved by their empowerment. These women were captains of their ship, in tune with their intuition and knowing what was important to them. They were able, even when their bodies were wracked from delivering their babies, to recognize what they needed and begin to enact it immediately.

It was a group of entrepreneurial women, and so they had already made their choice to be in business for themselves.

I know there are more stories of how women in the workforce with bosses have negotiated the right kind of working environment for themselves. I will look to hear more of those too.

I am inspired by these stories of determination and ambition. Women standing up for their families and themselves is exactly what the Pregnant Professional is about.

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