A friend confessed to sitting on her sofa and crying for the first three days of her maternity leave.  In advance, I wondered whether stepping away from much of how I define myself into something as yet unrealised would prove equally traumatic.

The front of my large shiny card from the office says: ‘You’re leaving (leaving – UGH) to have a baby’. Inside: ‘No ifs, no buts, no might, perhaps or maybe. You’re leaving and we wish you well; now go and have your baby!’  Messages range from the completely illegible to a one-word incitement to ‘PUSH’. Other contributions include ‘you’re too posh to push; ‘my friend says hypno-birthing is crap: stick to drugs’, and, memorably, ‘enjoy your six months holiday’.

I promised myself I wouldn’t be the last to leave the office that day, but after an indulgent cake, tea and speeches and endless sorting I found myself wandering through our deserted floor at 7pm breathing in the details, like you do when you move out of a house. I stared intently at the offices and workstations and wondered what would change while I am away.  Read More »

I noticed a massive variety in what pregnant women allow themselves, and others, to do. Take food. The NHS provides a pretty concise and sensible list of what to eat and what to avoid during pregnancy.  Having been inundated with various other bizarre and conflicting rules, my advice is to stick to it.  Definitely steer clear of books written by Americans and stay-at-home pregnant women if you want to retain a broad diet – which you will need if you’re going to show up in boardrooms around the world and be able to eat enough for you and your crazy hormones.

A few observations on national traits: the Serbians want you to eat soup and will provide it for you at all possible occasions; the Americans won’t let you eat lobster tail (and much more besides, but the tail seems a special sticking point; since it wasn’t on my NHS list I ate it anyway) or get within sniffing distance of a glass of wine; the Italians and Spanish are pretty relaxed about cheese, the French worry about the toxins on fruit and veg; and everyone agrees that anything goat-related is a bad idea.  I wonder what Heidi’s mother ate (did she die in childbirth?).

Tummy-touching is also controversial. Read More »

On one occasion I arrived at Lisbon airport, running, running. A security guard stopped me, babbling questions in Portuguese. After thirty years of flying, my brain was telling me one thing: Be Nice To Security. I smiled.  ‘Baby’ he said, pointing. ‘Come with me’.  He took my bags, and led me through a side door to a queue-less security point where I was sent around the scanner. My mind cast back to the anaconda-queue through Terminal Three the day before, when the BAA security guy blanked my anxiety about standing for so long. Although it’s not just BAA – looking back, that was the only time in perhaps twenty or thirty flights when my pregnancy was obvious that I was shown around a queue.

On that same flight out of Lisbon, the BA air cabin steward confidently sat down next to me. ‘So they told you about the meals then?’ Apparently they were short of meals in business, and I had been ‘selected’ not to get one.  I had not been told. I clarified that they had specifically ‘selected’ the pregnant lady. All the other business travellers were male. ‘Well obviously… had I known… oh dear.’  He faltered, his earlier assurance crushed. To my shame, I was overwhelmed by tears; too exhausted and too hungry to be polite (I’d been up since 5am).

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When we first become mothers, we undergo an imperceptible
transformation. We might not realise it, particularly at first, but
with a baby to care for, the centre of our universe moves and things we
might once have taken for granted as our most important goals become,
suddenly, inconsequential as we try to get a handle on what our
priorities need to be.

Research has demonstrated this too: according to findings from Dr Lynne
Millward Purvis, women – particularly working women – undergo three
‘identity shifts’ when they become mothers. Before giving birth, we
begin to feel increasingly invisible and undervalued as we prepare to
go on maternity leave. After giving birth, we are forced to acquire a
‘mother identity’, which causes our goalposts to move. And as we return
to work, we find we need to redouble our efforts as we seek to
revalidate ourselves, both as employees and as mothers. In my
experience of maternity coaching, women approaching maternity leave see
these coming and find it helpful to discover others feel the same.

Findings by Professor Daniel Stern are more challenging. He rocks the
self-image of the ambitious, self-sufficient woman – deciding instead
that new mothers are preoccupied by three internal conversations: with
herself, with her baby and with her own mother. Stern says a new mum is
more concerned with women and less with men, more with her emotional
growth and development and less with her career, more with her
‘husband-as-father-and-context-for-her-and-the-baby’ and less with her
‘husband-as-man-and-sexual-partner’. In short: more with her baby and
less with everything else.

It is only after crossing the irreversible bridge to motherhood that
most of us recognise or accept this. There are good biological and
societal reasons why it might work well for many of us to adapt in this
way. Our job is to accept that, for a while at least, we’ll be spending
most of our time focusing on the growth and survival of the baby, our
relatedness to the baby (including living up to social norms – even
where we don’t buy into these), establishing suitable support for
ourselves and, crucially, allowing our identity to adapt to all of
these.

And it doesn’t last forever – the baby takes centre stage for 12 -18
months, then our usual set of themes swims back into view, with career
moving back up the list. But while the transition lasts, here’s how we
can be kind to ourselves:

• Establish a support network of other mothers, and accept the need for
this. If we have a male partner, recognise we may be looking in a
stressfully inappropriate place (for both of you) for the support we
need if we lean fully on him. Other mothers are vital, and it’s a while
before some of us tap into this, especially at work. What can you do
next week to develop your support network of mothers at work and
outside?

• Accept the normality of how harshly we judge how we’re doing at
nourishing our babies, and at loving them. We tend to have a built-in
fear of failure, but we thrive best if we recognise both that the
pressure we feel is deeply normal, and that ‘good-enough’ will do – and
is more successful than perfect.

Dr Lynne Millward Purvis, the Transition to Motherhood in an Organizational Context is available from Ingenta, while Prof. Daniel Stern’s the Motherhood Constellation: a Unified View of Parent-Infant Psychotherapy is available from Google Books.

The first few months are the worst.  There’s no outward sign you’re pregnant, but you feel vile and dread the Tube.  You feel a fraud asking for the ‘less able to stand’ seat without a bump – despite feeling sick, dizzy and tired.  Wearing a badge that says ‘Baby on Board’ is not possible for so many reasons, the obvious one (apart from misplaced vanity about wearing a stupid badge) being that colleagues don’t know yet. One morning I was fighting dizziness when a man, perhaps in his 60s, gazed over for a moment thoughtfully, before getting up and saying quietly ’You need this more than I do’.  I regretted not being able to express the depths of my gratitude.

As the bump starts to show, women are more likely to move for you: they are better at spotting the signs (and more willing to take the risk that you might be just fat). Read More »

At some point around week 30 I found myself having some sort of identity crisis: I felt keenly that my professional sense of self was slipping – and the alternatives that presented themselves were not working for me.

The first was inspired by my mother who emailed me a link with a nappy changing bag she wanted to buy me.  It said ‘Yummy Mummy’ on the front.  Crikey.

At the other end of the spectrum, a colleague was telling her birth story.  Towards the end of labour things had slowed down, and the midwife suggested she try sitting on the loo ‘like she was going to have a poo’ (her words).  The tactic was successful and she eventually gave birth on all fours, completely naked and (her words again) ‘yowling’, her bottom sticking out of a teeny bathroom cubicle with three midwives and her husband crowded in the doorway poised to catch the baby.  I visualised myself in a similar circumstances and was confronted by the realisation of our base human function on this planet. Not something my day job usually calls for.

So, director of an international ad network, yummy mummy or animalistic biological reality?

Read More »

Is motherhood the source of all of women’s power, or our Achilles heel? Generally, we understand both these positions. But somehow we’ve focused recently on ‘supporting’ new mothers at work – rather than embracing their return as if from a prestigious, high-powered sabbatical. Whenever I try out the concept of Maternal Leadership, people recognise that the transition to motherhood can be viewed as a developmental step, bringing new capacities of value to employers. It’s not just a regrettable career break, or a challenging time that needs to be accommodated.

Read More »

Giving up travel was a difficult moment: doing the work without getting to deliver it is like training for a race you never get to run.

The midwife having banned flying, my last foreign trip was to Paris by train.  By that stage, if I’m honest, it was exhausting – and my ample tummy barely squeezed behind the little tables that flap down so you can eat dinner.  Yet, I still struggled to let go when I read the following email on the Eurostar home:

‘We are busy going through the process of ensuring we get short-listed on South Africa’s biggest pitch this year. Can we get you out here for the pitch to demonstrate our commitment, and you get to work off that IOU?  Have no idea when pitch will be, probably next month.’

I owed them because I’d postponed an earlier trip due to morning sickness.  I reluctantly replied: ‘Would love to but officially designated Too Fat to Fly. If you put it off til February will bring Junior for his/her first taste of Africa.’

When I got home I unpacked my travel bag. It was like the end of the sixth form: you know you’ve been through a lot, but you don’t know what you’ve achieved, and you sure as hell don’t know what comes next. Read More »

I woke in a panic, reaching for my husband.  I had dreamt I’d had our baby in the morning and then gone to the office for the afternoon, before popping by UCH on my way home to pick the baby up from a tetchy nurse.  It was detailed and cinematically vivid; when I woke my heart was racing hotly.  But my husband wasn’t there.  I was at the Intercontinental in Dusseldorf, alone.  Well, not entirely alone; our baby kicked suddenly.  Perhaps to register its objections on being born to such a crap mother.

I read on babycentre.com once that sleep expert Mary O’Malley says: “Dreams reflect your emotional reality.  Pregnancy brings up positive and negative feelings that you’ll digest through your dreams.”  Hmm.  In the morning, I shared my dream in light conversation with two close German colleagues, who were shocked.  When will you give up work, they ask.  When will you stop travelling?  Perhaps the dream sensitised me to their suggestion that I was already pushing it a bit.  Perhaps the imminent airline requirement of a letter of permission from my doctor to fly was also a clue.  Or perhaps it was the kindly taxi driver the day before in Amsterdam who, with the directness the Dutch are famed for, suggested I cancel my meetings and head straight home to rest and ready myself for my baby.

Unlike their more southern neighbours, the Germans tend not to directly comment on the bump.  Read More »

In Boston I see a presentation about the success of the Pampers/UNICEF alliance – Pampers donates money for vaccines for newborns around the world when you buy a pack. The insight behind the campaign is that there is an unspoken connection between mothers.

The insight clarified a thought that had been rumbling: I’ve become a member of a secret society.  Women offer advice, empathy and support when you are expecting a child as they never would normally.  A gulf is bridged by your pregnancy and their experience. Time and again in airports, offices and public places I am surprised when women confide their intimacies: pregnancy stories, parenting disasters and the occasional (sadly very occasional) orgasmic birth. Read More »