In August 2023, I became a mum. It was, and continues to be, the happiest moment and proudest achievement of my life. Becoming a working mum has also forced me to grow, stretch and adapt in ways I wouldn’t have thought I was capable of, and the journey to this point has certainly come with wild surprises, endless learnings, and perspective in abundance.
Never would I have expected that I would be sharing the exact same journey, at the exact same time, with my boss…
The reveal(s)
Finding the right moment to tell anyone you’re having a baby – especially your bosses – is a big deal. The nerves in the lead-up to this moment are only further fueled by the hormones, relentless nausea, inexplicable and endless fatigue and of course the uncertainty and excitement of the 12-week scan – is this definitely happening? Is everything ok? Am I in the clear to be sharing this news?
So you can imagine the immense surprise when, in the week before my planned ‘big reveal’, I was called in for a ‘quick catch up’ with the leadership team, and my bosses (I should mention here that our PR agency is co-owned by Nicola and Ash, an amazing power couple in business and in life) shared a company update that was a little different to the ones we’d heard before.
“We wanted to share some exciting news with you, we are having a baby!”
This hugely special news from a beautiful couple and proud parents-to-be was exciting for the whole leadership team. But, now that I was being positioned to hold the fort while Nicola stepped away from her first ‘baby’, in order to have a real human one, what did that mean for my news? What were the business implications if I was going to be on ‘career pause’ at the same time, leaving the two most senior people out of action concurrently? And would my opportunity to step into the role of Creative Director, a long-held career aspiration, still at some point be a possibility?
A national study at the University of South Australia, led by Dr Rachael Potter, surveyed over 700 people on their experiences of telling their employer they are pregnant, the process of accessing parental leave, and the impact being a parent had on their careers, the findings suggest that employees are treated differently by employers from the moment they announce they are expecting.
Sadly, 21.4 per cent of respondents were unsuccessful in gaining a promotion they thought they had earned, 21.4 per cent did not receive the training that they would have otherwise received, and shockingly, 16.6 per cent received negative or offensive remarks from management regarding their pregnancy.
I’m one of the very lucky ones. A week after congratulating Nicola and Ash on their pregnancy, I asked for another ‘quick catch up’ and announced my own, with, as it happened, the exact same due date. You couldn’t write it. News shared through somewhat excited but mostly nervous tears, the response was overwhelmingly positive and supportive. Both excited for me and assuring me this was happy news, Ash was glad the news wasn’t, in fact, my resignation, and Nicola was happy to have someone to share the journey with.
And so the news was out, and Operation: Break This To Our Team And Our Clients, And Keep This Ship Afloat, began.
Navigating pregnancy in the workplace
Unbeknownst to each other, Nicola and I both found out we were pregnant just before our work Christmas party, meaning we had just a few days to come up with a gameplan to avoid the inevitable questions as to why we weren’t drinking. Nicola chose to take microscopic sips of her wine to give off the illusion that she was still drinking, while I opted for the classic ‘on antibiotics, can’t drink’ trope.
In my first trimester, I developed an aversion to one of my truest loves; not to my partner (although I’ve heard pregnancy hormones can do that to you), but to coffee. The mere whiff of the stuff from across the office was enough to make me need to hurl. Keeping that under wraps in a fast-paced, caffeine-fuelled PR agency made for a tricky few weeks.
Once our happy news was shared with the wider team, we began to embrace our growing bellies, and also our growing workload. The next few months saw Nicola and I navigating conversations with some long standing clients, and many others in their infancy, letting them know we’d soon be going on hiatus, to fill a whole new kind of brief. We threw ourselves into training up the rest of the team, recruiting mat leave cover staff and developing strategies, executing big pieces of work well ahead of time and implementing new processes and safeguards to see our team and our clients through the months we’d be away. And we were physically slowing down, fast, but the business was speeding up.
At the same time, Nicola was also mentally preparing to be away from the business she built for the first time in nine years, relinquishing control and the confidence that comes with complete and effective oversight of the accounts she’d nurtured since the business’ inception, which I can only imagine was a very daunting prospect.
I was humbled by the support from Nicola and Ash and their proactive approach to providing information about leave entitlements, how Greenpoint would play into that, and what the return to work would look like. This unprompted commitment and ongoing support from their end only further served as motivation to deliver my best despite the growing tiredness, to leave everything in a position I could be proud of, and would look forward to returning to ‘on the other side’.
It also wasn’t lost on me that sadly in Australia, my positive experience is not a current reflection of the wider workforce. In stark contrast and shocking to learn, was that Dr Rachel Potter’s research found 32.7 per cent of respondents received no information about upcoming leave entitlements, and an appalling 66.5 per cent were exposed to an unmanageable workload, with 48.5 per cent given tasks with unreasonable deadlines and 35.9 per cent had excessive monitoring of their work. Australia still has a long way to go in support of pregnant and parent workers, and real change needs to come from the top down. Because when done right, I can tell you from experience, everyone wins.
Notes from night shift
Maternity leave was a welcome change of pace; stepping away from the role I knew at Greenpoint, into the role of mum, was a beautiful, transformative experience. As it happened, Nicola and Ash had a beautiful baby girl in early August, and three weeks later, my partner and I welcomed an incredible baby boy.
The privilege of having a supportive maternity leave arrangement with Greenpoint meant I could fully switch off, immerse myself in motherhood and find our new flow. Not without its challenges, the months of maternity leave were punctuated by sleepless nights. Nicola and I would often message each other during the night shift and it was nice to know someone else was out there in the dead of the night, sharing the same thoughts and feelings.
The return to work: A problem shared is a problem halved
Thankfully, the return to work was structured and supportive. As I stepped into Nicola’s role of Creative Director, she moved into her new role as Director in order to work on the business, rather than in it.
In the early days post mat-leave, fronting up to lead a team, sleep deprived with a five month old at home and hormones raging was hard, but having someone alongside you who knows what you’re going through, really helped. As the saying goes, a problem shared is a problem halved; being able to talk about the challenges instantly makes them easier to work on, and overcome. And empathy in business culture goes a long way.
Career progression, sleep regression, and the rollercoaster in between
Almost a year since becoming a mum, and six months since becoming a working mum, the journey continues to offer challenges and triumphs. Navigating sleep regressions during the working week is an all too familiar challenge, but career progression upon return has been a humbling triumph.
They say motherhood softens you, and it does. But in our reflections on it all so far, Nicola and I can both agree that it also hardens you, stretches and transforms you, and makes you capable of more than you ever thought possible.
It forces you to multitask more efficiently than you ever have before, to hone your time management to the minute and maximise every and any window of free time.
The motivation to squeeze the juice out of every working day is born out of the determination to completely switch off at the end of the day, swapping the computer for the carrier, soaking up every moment of connection with our beautiful babies before it’s time for dinner, bath and bed.
Feature image: Skye and Nicola with their babies.