Setting a Good Example on Maternity Leave

Reprobate Mum - 25 Feb 16

My sister is in labour. Right now, at this moment. She is three weeks early. She is 36 years old. She is also the head of HR at a blue chip multinational, and I could have told you this would happen months ago.

Six weeks ago, she left work with strong contractions. Stay off work I told her, start your maternity leave early. There is nothing to be gained though having your baby early. The best way for you to continue your career – for which she is the major breadwinner in her household, and for which she intends to return to work after the six months for which she is paid her salary in full, and for which she has put in blood sweat and tears for the best part of a decade to accrue to right to do so – is to keep that baby in for as long as possible.

She didn’t want to, she said. She wanted to work until her planned maternity leave, which would have begun on March 7th. Today it’s February 24th. Her baby was due on March 19th.

I could have told you this was going to happen because her body’s been telling her this for months. It’s not that she struggled to get pregnant, but her second to last pregnancy ended at 11 weeks. The one after barely made it past the blue line. There may be myriad reasons for this – her age, perhaps, her health in general. But I’m not so sure. A stressful house move at the time she miscarried the first time may have played a part, granted. But her job, for which she often works till late – a 9 pm finish is standard for her – seems to me a more likely culprit.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame her. She has worked long and hard to climb the career ladder in a male dominated industry. Her attitude has always been, if I don’t keep up, I may lose ground. I believe her when she says she had no choice but to keep going at the crazy pace she always has. After all, she is the major wage earner and the world is becoming increasingly precarious for employees, at whatever level they operate. She should know. She works in HR.

Her baby will probably be absolutely fine. In the grand scheme of things, 36.6 weeks isn’t far off full-term, but actually, when you are barely 37 weeks old, a few extra cosy weeks in the womb are pretty important for snagging, and putting the finishing touches on things. Being born early is more likely to lead to developmental delays, behavioural problems, or longer term health condition, at least,, that’s what a brief Google search tells me (I’m not claiming to be an expert). For all mothers were routinely induced early in the 80s and 90s to fit their own or their consultant’s schedules, we know now that this is basically not great for the resulting child. None of which is terribly convenient for a mother hoping to return to her career at the earliest opportunity. And this is the rub.

Short-termism is at the very heart of capitalism, and thus still takes centre stage in the working world. Taking a bit of time off earlier may well have saved time, potentially stress and god forbid, heartache later – for my sister and, more importantly, for her baby. But it’s hard to make a business case for the unknown and, in fact, next generation, even if the outcome of my sister pregnancy was all, actually rather predictable from where I’m standing.

And what message does it send out to other women at my sister’s employment, if the head of HR is more concerned about keeping up with the hours her male colleagues put in than the health of her baby? What message, in fact, does it send to her daughters?

The thing is, I don’t blame my sister for feeling she needed to keep going and keep pushing herself, even when her body was quite clearly telling her otherwise. I blame a working world that is congenitally blinkered to what it really means to be a mother. Where the medical world is, at last, catching up on the fact that mother’s bodies know best when it comes to having their babies, the working world still has some catching up to do.

A day later and I’m a proud auntie of a gorgeous though tiny 5.5 Ib baby girl, whose delivery has perhaps eclipsed the fear and anger I felt when I wrote this piece yesterday. But, with birth weight actually a fairly defining piece of information about a person, associated, as it is with poor health and socio-economic status among many other less concerning things like genes, I can’t help but feel that more can be done to create an ideal condition for babies when they are born. And, with medical attempts to reverse a rising trend for low birth weight babies failing, which has a big effect on the nation’s health at a macro level, this is one place where industry should take a long hard naval gaze, and wonder whether its treatment of pregnant women may partly be to blame.

Reprobate Mum

East London dwelling mum to two bandy-legged pre-tweens, and a pug called Johnny. Huff Post blogger, copywriter, ex-journo, whose philosophical musings on life, death and everything in between have been featured in The Sunday Times Magazine, Marie Claire, Mumsnet and La Repubblica.

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