Have you heard of DINKs?

Double Income No Kids: that’s when a couple each has a job and they don’t have kids.

It’s a scenario that really maximizes acquisition of money.

And the moment this partnership arrives at pregnancy is a signficant one. The polarity shifts. Instead of the north and south poles of each partner’s career being the driving force, BOTH partners have to be driven by this new child.

And it’s going to take 9 months for that child to actually arrive.

If you are anything like me, the pregnancy does not arrive in a vaccuum. I planned for my transition into having a child with my partner for a long, long time.

I’m a planner. We actually got our 3 bedroom house with a yard and a dog BEFORE we got married.

And then we got married.

And then I planned when I wanted the kid to be born, and planned the conception.

I know not everyone is quite as much of a conrol freak as I am, but even if a pregnancy is a suprise to a DINK couple, the slow unfolding of “What are we going to do now?” is a question that definitely needs to be considered.

A lot of changes, a lot of examination of priorities are in order.

And that is exactly why I created this Pregnant Professional curriculum.

I cannot tell you how to live your life. I firmly believe you are the one who knows best.

What I CAN do is help you with a set of questions and topics to consider. Somethings you won’t even know you don’t know.

That is part of the glory of my program. I want you to be set. I want you to have your feet solidly underneath you and be able to make the choice you want.

It is looking like this moment in history for American women is one with the highest education. Women have been flocking to colleges and universities and making their mark.

I found this really interesting article from last fall, saying that the most educated women are the ones most likely to be married.

Which is to say, we want a family. We often want children. It is no longer the trap it used to feel like when a woman had no other choiced:

In the past, highly-educated women faced an unenviable choice between accepting a patriarchal marriage or forgoing marriage and children entirely. Now they are able to raise their children within a stable marriage without compromising their independence.

How great is this! We have our independence and can fashion our lives and our family’s lives from our own choices.

THis is news!

and the very news-worthiness of this story indicates how necessary the Pregnant Professional curriculum is.

We are forging out path. There are some mileposts along the way I can point out.

A long time ago, we had a draft. Every young man had to serve in the military. Around about that time, there were also a lot of wars. So, almost all the men in America had combat stories or service stories.

Military service is volunteer now, but the fact that our history had this common experience is significant.

Women serve with distinction in the military now. I honor the career path of military service some women choose.

And all mothers have a childbirth story. It reminds me of war stories. How a lot of veterans would only talk about their experiences among other veterans. If a lucky non-initiate got to hear some of the things that went on, like I sometimes did, they were jaw dropping.

As is every mother’s childbirth story.  Each one is filled with danger, bravery, narrow escapes and high drama. How can it be otherwise?

And the same thing is true like the veterans. MOthers usually only bring these stories out when they are around people who know. Or other women who are about to join the club.

And when I share my unique program with women, mothers who have been through it always share what they wish THEY had thought of.

In such a massively complicated endeavor, with all the variables of your ENTIRE LIFE involved in the process, every single mother can look back and think of something they wished they’d done differently.

Naturally, the reference books that are out there for women to help them through their pregnancy are MASSIVE. Intimidating and terrifying, they have too much information and not enough information.

My program has taken a different–dare I say UNIQUE? yes. yes I do.– approach. I have a thorough and compact set of checklists and questions that are specific to how to handle your career while pregnant.

If your career is what matters to you, then this is a godsend. If your career is less important to you than, say, the decoration of your baby’s nursery, this program is not for you.

I have made this course for women who are like me. Who care deeply, and have big dreams and raging ambition, and determination that their work and their career will NOT take a backseat to motherhood.

Here are the tools and the questions for you to have to eagle eye view, so you can look at the trajectory of your career during this time.

For my pregnant professional tribe, I have so much faith in you. I have so much hope in you. You can change the world! I only want to help you.

I have said this here before. I am a workaholic in recovery.

I’m kind of kidding. And mostly not. I was definitely in the throes of this problem when I was pregnant.

Part of my mindset at that time meant putting off anything I might need, want or have to do if I thought it might make me a better employee if I didn’t do it.

What would my boss want? What might my customers need?

I couldn’t possibly make plans or commit to things if there was a chance that my job needed something from me.

What that meant is that I missed out on a lot of baby-related things I might otherwise have enjoyed.

It was hard for me when I was home with my newborn. I wanted to be at work doing more interesting things.

I did cut my leave short a little because i was so bored.

I wish I had prepared better. I wish I’d known how to enjoy my time.

In the end, that is what The Pregnant Professional is all about. I wrote it out, so that you can have a better experience than i did.

You can benefit from what I wish I’d done.

My good friend once told me, Nothing takes a short amount of time. It would take me 15 minutes to blow my nose. You can never assume that something will only take a little time.

I was thinking about this when I was getting ready to write this blogpost. It doesn’t hardly take any time to take care of all the things it takes to be pregnant at work.

All those little details. Like getting the paperwork for this and that. And handing off your usual projects to someone else while you are going to be gone.

But all those things don’t just HAPPEN.

Early in my career I had to take a work trip to Washington DC to make sure that an AV cart was set on a platform–a ‘riser.’

I didn’t have to lift it. The platform had already been delivered. It was my job to make sure the strong men from the mail room lifted the cart with the TVs on it and set it on the platform. And to make sure it didn’t come unplugged while it was being moved.

I was delighted to visit the capital. And amazed at the ridiculousness of this task. Really? A person had to be given this responsibility?

Now I understand why in a way I didn’t then.

All these little things, if they are important and somebody cares about them, have to be handled.

Who cares about your pregnancy as it affects your career?

You do. More than anybody else.

So. Make a plan.

This is important. Get some help. I’ve got exactly the plan to help you make sure this is handled.

It’s humiliating.

Someone said something, reacting to something I had said. And she took it all the way the wrong way and laid into me.

Which could be humiliating.

But the part that was the most humiliating? The part that I let it get to me.

It threw me off all day. My sense of myself was totally rocked.

It could have been because I hadn’t had enough sleep.

The fact that the attack happened in the morning meant I was distracted and didn’t pay attention to getting a healthy breakfast didn’t help at all.

I started to doubt everything about myself, and hate my life.

I spiralled into negative thinking so fast I started a tornado.

This used to happen more often. I learned a few coping mechanisms to pull out of all that.

It took concentrated effort and to be honest quite a few tears.

I am glad that I was alone quite a bit of the time while I was at work so I could feel all the feels and work it out.

I wrote down on a paper all the things that I was feeling that I DIDN’T want to feel.

I wrote that on the left side of the page.

Then on the right, I wrote down the exactly opposite. That was what I really wanted to feel.

Beloved
Graceful
Wise
Fierce

…to name a few. I felt a little better, and decided to get a good night’s sleep tonight and start over in the morning.

I didn’t really want to come here and blog. But I really did, because it matters to me.

Then I realized, this is a common feeling for women. And especially women who are sleep deprived. Like many pregnant women. Or new mothers.

So, even though it was a hard day for me I figured I would share it and let any of you who have felt this way know you are not alone.

And a lot of those tools I’ve learned I’m happy to share with my Pregnant Professional tribe. You are beloved, wise, graceful and fierce too.

I remind you so you can feel it too.

I was raised in a place where women were not supposed to amount to anything. My dad said to me “You should go to college and finish. Because I know my sisters always wished they had finished college.”

Somehow the idea of me going to college to have a career for myself and to accomplish an ambitious goal for my future wasn’t something he expressed.

Early on I told my mother I wanted to have 10 kids.

Honestly? That was the only future I could imagine. Women in my world did not have careers or ambitions. They did have a lot of kids.

And if that was the only standard of achievement, I was going to acieve more than anyone I knew

I burned to have a challenge.

I did find a challenge in my career, eventually. I loved my job.

I did want to start a family, but I was quite ready to postpone it.

I was totally unwilling for my ambitions to take a backseat to childrearing.

How about side-by-side?

I was talking with my mom about what I’m doing here with the Pregnant Professional.

She was remembering when she worked at “the co-op” while she was pregnant with my oldest brother.

“We kind of stepped in when one of the women was pregnant. We knew she’d be tired and busy with a new baby.”

That may have been cool in the 60s at the co-op. But when you are a women who has really invested in her career as a doctor, or a lawyer or any other profession that takes a lot of education–maybe she doesn’t want ‘help.’

I believe that women should be asked, and listened to.

Yes, the sheer number of decisions that must be made when a woman has incomplete facts can be overwhelming.

But I believe that she–that YOU!–can handle it.

Maybe you want help. Maybe you don’t.

It’s up to you.

What I’ve done is come up with a format to contemplate the questions and the information lay the foundation for when the decisions need to be made.

You are the one who knows.

“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.”