I don’t know. In theory, it’s very simple – just get pregnant and inform HR of when and how long you’ll be away- but in practice… it’s less obvious. Even a bigger question is how do you return to an investment banking career after having a baby, but since I don’t have to think about that yet, let’s focus on the immediate matter at hand – going on maternity leave.
I’m now 35-weeks (or eight months) pregnant. The career break is getting very close. Perhaps closer than I thought. I’m writing this post from my bed on a Thursday afternoon, in bed rest after a night of hourly contractions. More about this in a moment, but first, taking a step back…
My family, friends and even some clients particularly in the Nordic region where the culture around long parental leaves is very advanced, have been curious about how I intend to handle taking care of my baby and managing my career. Many have assumed I will stop working. Some have been concerned about me returning to work too quickly (whatever that means) and some about the cost of childcare in London. All valid concerns which I have also thought about.
I don’t have the answers yet. I promise to write a blog post in a few years about how I handled it – right now I don’t know. All I know is that nothing would put me off starting a family and that there are examples of women out there who have managed to combine a career and a baby, in case that’s what I’ll choose to do.
In the UK we have a statutory right to a 52-week maternity leave and 2-week paternity leave. This time off is not entirely unpaid but there is a small statutory pay:
Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP)
SMP for eligible employees can be paid for up to 39 weeks, usually as follows:
- the first 6 weeks: 90% of their average weekly earnings (AWE) before tax
- the remaining 33 weeks: £140.98 or 90% of their AWE (whichever is lower)
Tax and National Insurance need to be deducted.
Info from: https://www.gov.uk/employers-maternity-pay-leave
In addition to that some companies offer an enhanced maternity pay. This depends on the company’s maternity policy. My bank is relatively generous offering four months of full pay for women.
In the UK we also have what’s called a shared parental leave allowing parents to share the time off between them. However, often the equality is rather theoretical as the pay during this leave for mums and dads can be very different! In our case we’d give up my partner’s pay almost entirely as his paternity pay would be the statutory minimum while my maternity package is much more generous. So financially sharing the leave would not make any sense.
And the sad truth is that what’s your statutory right may also be rather theoretical if demanding for a shared parental leave would harm your career progression or lead to an “indefinite leave on unemployment benefits”, if you know what I mean.
So that’s a bit about the legal set up but what does this mean in practice? My plan was to continue working as long as possible to save the precious, limited maternity leave weeks for when the baby is here. I needed to notify HR 12-weeks ahead of my due date of the day I intend to start leave. Obviously being pregnant for the first time, at 6-months I had no idea how it would feel like to be working at 8-months pregnant! Of course HR department understands this and they said I can amend the date for health reasons if need be. And so I told them that on December 1st I would start my leave. That’s four weeks from now and less than a week before my due date.
Before I go on I’d like to highlight that this post is not about the big bad bank overworking a pregnant woman! It’s been my decision to be still working full time. I’ve been working myself to exhaustion because of my own obvious incapability to take my foot off the gas. That’s it.
A week ago my midwife said to prepare for an early arrival of our baby. There are signs of approaching labour and I have to admit it’s getting physically harder now to cope – although I’ve been lucky enough in that everything has gone well and normally. The ninth month of pregnancy is not a walk in the park even on a good day!
October for me was pretty manic! On the positive, I loved all the action at work – two new deal launches, two work trips and training a new joiner. Would be great to leave on a high note, I thought. But at the same time we were spending our weekends at prenatal classes, hunting for baby stuff and preparing the flat… while trying to remain social “while we still can”. Both my partner and I were starting to really feel it – neither one of us had had the time for our usual gym routine which is a way to relax, rejuvenate and unwind for both of us.
This very long story lead up to last night’s events – me crying uncontrollably in the bath tub because I just hit the wall (metaphorically) and everything felt overwhelming and I could not even get my head around the property purchase documents I was meant to sign (more about the house purchase later!!). This was followed by waking up hourly at night to painful contractions and worrying about going into labour five weeks early.
The contractions, although regular and painful did not however intensify or get more frequent. In the morning I called the midwife helpline. I was told to rest and monitor the Braxton Hicks contractions as it seemed as that’s indeed what they were and our baby was not going to be born today. A relief.
Eight hours later I’m still in bed, feeling a bit better. I get more Braxton Hicks as soon as I get up, but lying down gives me a chance to rest.
Let’s just say that working for another four weeks would seem pretty unrealistic from where I’m (not) standing …
xoxoxo,
Sini
