‘Support not special treatment’: Marketers on navigating pregnancy at work

Pregnancy is undoubtedly one of the most vulnerable times in a woman’s career. From the dilemma of when to tell your employer, to concerns about being sidelined and the sheer physical toll on your body, the stress endured during the nine-month lead up to giving birth can be profound.

Balancing the reality of pregnancy with running her businesses and startup community Up World and Brand Hackers founder Lottie Unwin is fully aware of the complexity involved. She has talked openly in recent weeks about experiencing day long nausea for months on end and struggling with commutes that feel like running a marathon.

Unwin also understands its complicated for her team, as preparing for her departure is an added pressure to a small business and the adjustment starts before going on maternity leave.

“I can see all angles. As an individual contributor, as someone trying to do my job, I don’t want my team or my business contacts to see me differently,” she reflects.

“I appreciate that in telling everyone ‘I’m pregnant and I’m suffering’ they will see me differently.”

I was still me, but I didn’t feel like me at times and I just wanted someone to see that and understand it.

Anna O’Riordan

The Up World founder also appreciates the dichotomy in saying on one hand expectations might need to flex to help her manage her symptoms, while at the same time being hungry for opportunities.

“It’s really complicated to say ‘I want you to understand that and respect that. But I also want all the same career opportunities.’ It’s full of contradiction,” says Unwin.

She describes it as a two-year project getting the business to a place where it could function without her and the team would be supported. What Unwin wasn’t prepared for was tryingtryimg to do all this while dealing with the physical impact of being pregnant.

There is also the emotional side of pregnancy to contend with. She describes experiencing a “huge identity crisis” around preparing to step away from work when it still feels like she doesn’t want to take a minute off.

Given many maternity policies only kick in when women go on leave, Unwin believes there aren’t enough social structures in place to help working women during pregnancy. She argues women don’t feel empowered to ask for reasonable adjustments to help them work effectively and for that to be a relaxed conversation with their employer.

Unwin has been inspired to implement more measures in her own business, starting with working from home which she describes as “game changing”.

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“The impact on your expected output is day and night, because what you don’t realise until you’re pregnant is that a 45-minute commute is literally a marathon,” she says.

The point, Unwin argues, is that conversations around flexibility need to start during pregnancy and not in the weeks before returning to work.

“My experience of pregnancy is that you have a very limited amount of energy and it should be a conversation with your boss, which is: ‘I want to use as much of this energy as possible to keep your business going. I can use it to get into town, that’s going to be all my energy. Is that what we all collectively think is the best use of that energy or what if I was at home and then I could do a proper day’s work?’” she says.

Freelance email and content marketing specialist Kaitlyn Fleming knows this scenario all too well. She discovered she was in the very early stages of pregnancy when on the job search. While negotiating the toll on her body of being sick upwards of five times a day, she accepted a marketing role at a startup which required two days a week in the office.

While two days felt doable despite the severe sickness, within weeks of joining the company suddenly shifted to three days in person. The situation forced her to tell her manager about her pregnancy earlier than she might otherwise have intended.

“I just kept getting more sick. Then they want to meet in the office three days a week. I just told him: ‘Hey, just so you know why I keep running to the bathroom, I’m pregnant and I’m super sick,’” Fleming recalls.

Why flexibility matters

Her manager tried his best to shield her from questions about attending the office from the CEO. However, under increasing pressure she decided to tell the CEO she was pregnant in the hope he would understand and make reasonable adjustments.

“He was like: ‘I hear congrats are in order, but you still need to come into the office,’” says Fleming. “He literally didn’t care. I’d be in a meeting with him, I’d run out to throw up and have to come back, pretending I wasn’t sick.”

The business failed to recognise the toll the hour-long commute was taking on her, combined with the pressure to attend face-to-face meetings, nor was there any acknowledgement she had joined on the basis of two days in office, three days remote.

Despite going above and beyond, the position became untenable. Aware of the toll the stress was taking on her and the baby, Fleming resigned three months in, before she was five months pregnant. She then took on a contract role for a few months before giving birth to her daughter.

It’s really complicated to say ‘I want you to understand that and respect that. But I also want all the same career opportunities.’ It’s full of contradiction.

Lottie Unwin, Up World

“In the last couple of months, I literally couldn’t walk anywhere. I could not walk to my train station, so I was working remote for the last little while,” Fleming recalls.

The contract role knew she was pregnant when she started and were happy with the fact she would come in as long as she could and then work from home when it became too much. The understanding was she’d do the role until they hired someone full time.

Pregnant women are not going to take advantage of any flexibility on offer and just want to be given the freedom to do their best work, she explains. The smallest gestures matter, like on the most basic level asking how you are.

“He [the CEO] literally said: ‘Congrats but we still need you in the office.’ It wasn’t even like: ‘Wow, awesome. How far along are you? You probably don’t need to be telling everyone this. Is it OK that I know? You don’t need to tell anyone else. It’s safe with us. Do what you need to do,’” Fleming recalls.

“There was nothing. The mental stress of it was affecting me physically, which is quite a scary thing.”

Looking back on her experience, her advice to anyone struggling with a company culture that shows no empathy towards their pregnancy is to speak up for yourself. This could mean telling a line manager you’re pregnant so they understand the full picture and can support you, but also asking for that information to be kept confidential

“You don’t have to tell people you’re pregnant. You can say there’s health stuff and people need to respect that,” Fleming adds.

Meaningful support

A marketer with more than 25 years’ experience, fractional CMO Anna O’Riordan is disappointed the situation hasn’t improved for women in the decade since she gave birth.

She recalls how the culture both inside and outside work made her feel she had no choice but to keep pushing through despite experiencing horrendous, day-long nausea for the first trimester of her pregnancy.

“I was commuting into work on a normal basis, but then suddenly I was seconded because we had sites all over the place and had people leaving in endless restructures. They said on top of your job can you go to Portsmouth three times a week,” O’Riordan explains.

“I was pregnant and I didn’t feel able to say: ‘I don’t think I can do that. I’m pregnant and I really don’t feel well.’”

The mental stress of it was affecting me physically, which is quite a scary thing.

Kaitlyn Fleming

Battling with nausea and grappling with a commute to an office two hours from home, she found herself desperately trying to squeeze in early morning, evening or weekend antenatal appointments under pressure not to be off work. Couple with that the societal pressure to ‘have it all’, balancing a fulfilling career with impending motherhood. At the end she went on mat leave feeling burned out.

On a subconscious level, O’Riordan remembers feeling like she needed to over-deliver and overcompensate to prove the pregnancy wasn’t having a detrimental effect on her performance.

“You are still here. You are still superhuman Anna. You are still doing everything. You’re still performing. Yes, of course you’ll take on that additional secondment for three days a week,” she says.

When she left work at 37 weeks pregnant, she still remembers a midwife blaming her for her baby being breach, because she had “been sat at a desk for too long”.

The fact many businesses don’t have policies to support women during pregnancy is a “big gap”, she adds. It’s not about excuses or special treatment, O’Riordan argues, but the support women deserve.

“Having really clear policies from the moment someone starts thinking about having a child that they can look at and understand what it entails would be such a gamechanger for women,” she says.

“Particularly women in this economy who are really having to plan when is the right time to have a child? When can I afford to do this?”

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The irony is, women often most need support exactly at the time they feel they can’t talk about it, because it seems too early in the pregnancy, O’Riordan explains.

“We’re vulnerable. It feels risky. Maybe it will set wheels in motion with the business, panic and changes of decisions. And then if I lose the baby, what happens? For me personally, and that’s different for every woman, I probably needed more support in those first 13 weeks when I didn’t know what was happening to myself,” she recalls.

“I was relentlessly nauseous. I was still me, but I didn’t feel like me at times and I just wanted someone to see that and understand it.”

Businesses need to recognise that while pregnancy comes with very real biological changes, it doesn’t make women any less able to do their jobs, although adjustments during that period can help them thrive, O’Riordan adds.

“How much better would it have been if somebody had said: ‘If you have a baby here’s the policy. You’re allowed X number of appointments, if you need more please come and talk to us. We understand that it’s difficult. Here’s our support line,’” she says.

“Or a boss who says: ‘How are you doing? Can you manage this? Do you need to travel in a bit later in the morning for the train?’ What a massive difference it would make.”