I hope this post will serve as a support to other women who are pregnant and working, as well as their partners. You are not alone in these tough times, and this too shall pass.
When expecting her second baby, one of my ex-colleagues replied to a comment about challenges of raising two kids: “Raising another child is fine, it’s just that I have to be pregnant again”. I didn’t think much of that back then, but the phrase stuck with me. When I got pregnant myself, I quickly understood why she said that.
Medical professionals say: no two pregnancies are the same. If you had an easy time with it, I am truly happy for you. I wasn’t so lucky on the other hand. I am sure my situation wasn’t the worst possible, but it wasn’t a good one either. For me, it turned out that, what is commonly referred to as “morning sickness”, consists of a wide range of feelings like nausea, headache, dizziness, fatigue, and so on. All happening at the same time by the way. The tricky part is that, unlike your post-weekend hangover, this was never going away. No amount of cold water on your face or fresh air helped. It was with me every second first trimester: when I woke up, when I went to bed, when I spent time in the PNW outdoors, and when I ate. I actually had to force myself to eat, because if I didn’t, it got worse. It felt like it would never get better. It took all my mental strength to focus and get things done, so my brain stopped wasting resources on unnecessary things, like cleaning up. Actually, my husband still jokes that for a couple of months back then he was following a trail of candy wrappers, which, for some reason, I was dropping all over our place and never picking up. To put it in a nutshell, as one of my friends once said: “You have to live the experience”.
Why did no one tell me?
There was one other thing I was experiencing on a daily basis besides morning sickness: deception. I felt deceived by my women friends, colleagues, social media, and by my own mother. Why on earth did no one tell me it could be so tough? Of course I knew about nausea and hip pain, but that doesn’t prepare for the actual experience at all! I saw one of my former classmates doing 10k runs throughout her whole pregnancy, a friend who was doing bathroom remodeling by herself in her last week, and I’d seen numerous women colleagues giving presentations, going on business trips, and debating at managerial meetings. How was I supposed to know it could be that tough? The (not so) funny thing was that when I started sharing my experience, everyone was saying: “Oh, yes, I had the same thing”. I felt like at that point I was admitted into “the club” and suddenly people started telling me things. Of course, I see plenty of valid reasons why most of us don’t share such personal details of their lives with others. Not the least of them is the fear of being treated differently at work, and hurting our chances at getting good assignments and promotions. But at that time the only thing I could think of was: “Do we really have to pretend that things are well?” I was.
The fog has settled
Going back to the beginning, a couple of weeks into my “magical time” I realized that it is not getting better and I needed to tell someone at work what was going on. I was worried that my performance might have been negatively affected, so I decided to tell three of my colleagues, with whom I interacted the most at work. It was such a relief when a couple of days later one of them came to my desk and offered me a Gingermint (helps with nausea, you know). I didn’t have to tell her and explain what was going on. She just knew. To date, every time I see those Gingermints at a checkout in Trader Joe’s, I smile. It reminds me of that act of kindness and support from her.
Having these people in my life, who were all smiles and congratulations from the first moment I told them gave me that much needed support at work. When they asked me how I was doing, I could honestly tell them that it still sucked. I was no longer alone there. I was able to stay focused on the most important parts of my projects, and power through those few challenging weeks.
And then came the day when I was reading Slack messages, and I noticed a long thread where I thought I could help with the problem. It wasn’t exactly part of my project, but still, I jumped into the discussion to add my two cents. That’s when one of my confidants sent me a private message — “Welcome back!” The fog was lifting.
Vegas!
But before it got better it was still bad. And while it was still bad for me, our team of more than a hundred people was going on a Hackathon trip to Las Vegas. It was a chance to work with new people for a couple of days on anything we’d wanted, but I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. My manager encouraged me to consider it, and my husband thought we could do a short road trip around Death Valley and unwind a bit. I couldn’t really picture myself surviving a road trip with that never ending hangover-like feeling, but I guess most people visiting Las Vegas have a similar experience anyway. And so we went. Nevada roads turned out to be much smoother than my own ten year old couch, so my husband’s superb trip planning skills didn’t go to waste. It turned out to be a pretty good idea, as it helped me to relax a bit before the more demanding work part of the trip.
After the road trip, my husband returned home by himself, and I stayed on for the Hackathon. We stayed in a house with a bunch of teammates, so it was very nice not to be alone. I planned ahead, and brought with me three bags of cookies that I could eat in case the food provided there didn’t agree with my brain or stomach. I carried them everywhere in my big laptop backpack. Only once, on our last day there, I had to go outside for an hour or so to catch my breath. Luckily, in March the warm Nevada sun offered a much more pleasant outdoors experience than Seattle rain. At the end, our team didn’t win any prizes, but on my flight back home I still had a few cookies left in my backpack.
The social media image
Towards the end of my pregnancy, when everyone around me knew (and saw) that I was having a baby, I received a message from an ex-colleague of mine. She was wondering if I would like to give a talk at Women in Machine Learning and Data Science meetup (WiMLDS). I wasn’t sure I could find time and effort to do it, but my manager got very excited about it and encouraged me to consider it. So I thought I’d make this one last effort before starting my parental leave. One reason I decided to do it was that I wanted to erase from my memory an image of me sitting at my desk in the office and hoping I wouldn’t be sick at work that day. I wanted to substitute it with an image of me presenting my work in front of an audience who is interested in what I do. Just like my other colleagues were doing. Just like the social media portrays. I am pretty sure that during the presentation I had the full “pregnancy glow” on my face. Only it wasn’t the pregnancy, but rather a full room of people listening with attention, my teammates in the audience, and my husband in the front row.
Would you like a Gingermint?
There are many valid reasons why we are not sharing details of our personal lives at work. Not the least of them is the fear of missing out on workplace opportunities. Everyone wants to project confidence and show that we can do it. But I am still wondering if we could be hurting ourselves and our colleagues by inadvertently sending a message that admitting to difficulties is not appropriate. I am wondering if we could find a better way to help our teammates, and if we can lower our guards just a bit and accept this help. We don’t want a different treatment, or easier projects. We can do it. All we need is a little bit of empathy, encouragement, and a box of Gingermints.