Work and pregnancy - advice needed (esp Academics)

[MaudGonneMad]

Seeing as we are still waiting for Academics' Corner....thought I'd post here and hopefully get some traffic from academics waiting around for term to start

Just got a BFP on a pregnancy test - hurrah - it's the first day of my missed period. Rough calculation indicates that due date is around 12 May.

So my question is: when did you tell your HoD about pregnancy? I know the general standard is 12 weeks, after the first scan etc. I have specialist teaching which runs in both semesters and is examined at the end of the year, as well as a very heavy teaching load in the 2nd semester (which runs from Feb-end May).

I don't, obviously, want to leave my students/department in the lurch, but nor do I know how the pregnancy will go, whether I will need/want to finish early. And of course I don't want to needlessly broadcast pregnancy in case anything goes wrong.

Advice/experience gratefully received! Especially from those eminent MNers who have served as HoDs and possibly managed situations like this before.

Hello
I have experience of this. It is hard because of the nature of the job - the way your workload is planned so far in advance and having a specialism which can't be covered easily. I think when you tell your head of dept. depends on how you feel. I can easily work 12 hour days in term time and you may not feel up to it esp. in your first trimester. i am 8 weeks and dreading starting this term. You aren't obligated to tell them yet, finding cover is their problem, not your's. I am a programme leader
Have do pop out but will be back soon

Most academic institutions work to a 3 months notice period if you were to leave - I see no reason why this shouldn't apply here. If you tell them at / just after 12 weeks, they still have between 4-6 months (depending on when you start your mat leave) to plan your replacement.

Thanks for replies.

Ten the last three colleagues who have gone on mat leave haven't been replaced. Their due dates fell over the summer so their specialist teaching was finished, and their courses simply weren't offered the following year. as far as I can gather, there isn't a culture of mat replacements in this dept.

Thanks Iamyourwifenow. My semseter 1 load is v light, so I hope to be able to make good progress on my research before going on leave.

Maud, I understand, but that's their issue, not yours. You'd be giving them more than adequate notice. If they don't get a temp / replacement in, there's not much you can do. Are you worried they would put more work on you in the run-up somehow?

Also, sorry - HUGE congrats on your pregnancy!

I think I just worry about leaving my students in the lurch halfway through the semester. Also marking. And the fact that my load is so imbalanced, with more than 2/3 of my teaching and admin concentrated in the second semester.

Broader issues of concern include the fact that my DH works 2 hours away and commutes Mon-Thurs. No family nearby on either side.

Thanks for the congratulations! First ones I've received

Congrats! I told mine very early on in the pregnancy as I was aware of timetabling. I felt bad. I am not sure that it was helpful to me but I was probably being overly kind. You don't have to do that though. Have a think about it and see what seems right for you.

I am only just now going back in a more formal capacity but mine is a very long story!

How early was v early, purplepandas?

Hello Maud. Congratulations!!

I'm an academic with an 18 mo DD. When I was your this position, I was planning to tell after the 12 week scan. But, awful "morning" sickness set in at about week 5 and I had no choice but to tell my HoD very early. So, be prepared for that to be a possibility. I also had to stop working altogether by about week 16. Hopefully won't happen to you, but don't assume you have 8 months left to work! With hindsight, it was great to tell my HoD early, because he's a very nice guy who gave me some much needed support (also no family nearby). What is your HoD like?

Also, please try not to worry about leaving your students. In the nicest possible way, it will not be a big deal to them - just a small blip. After all they're university students and responsible for their own learning. You're still in the "work" mindset, and slowly you will shift to "parent" and fully realize that now it's about your baby first, you second, and students come in a distant third . That sounds incredibly patronizing, but it took me a while to truly make the mental shift.

HoD is new in post, so something of an unknown quantity. I have gotten on well with him personally though.

Well, personally I'd aim for after the 12 week scan, assuming nothing comes up to change that.

I'm not an academic but I do teach as a guest lecturer in a university.
I told my course director at 15weeks and we worked to find guest speakers to fill the teaching I couldn't do and we rearranged topics within the module etc. to accommodate my absence.
Really it was far easier than if I'd been handing in notice or sick because we had ages to plan.

How specialised is your topic? I know some lecturers whose topics are very specialised, and it would be difficult to get anyone else in to cover part of a course, and in particular, the examining and marking of what had been taught before they left. Also, in some cases the students would have been choosing modules based on those specific interests, and it would be difficult for them if the course itself were to change part way through the year to a different specialism or something more general.

I think it's the answers to questions like that that would depend how early you let your HoD know. For the sake of general goodwill, I would probably want to say something earlier rather than later, if it meant that a replacement would be difficult to find; if it were going to be a nightmare trying to find someone to examine/mark your bits of the course; if students' choices were going to be significantly impacted, etc. A series of guest lecturers is well and good, but if they are all people who have their own examining and marking to do at other institutions, that might not solve all the problems. And whilst it is the department's problem to sort out, I wouldn't want to leave them in the lurch if I could help it, and if the timetable or choice of specialisms might change depending on whether I was there, who else could be back up, etc, then I would try to let them know before term started, when it might still be possible to rearrange to reduce the potential impact.

I guess it depends a lot on your relationship with the HoD though, how confidential they might be, whether they know it's something you were considering, whether they are likely to be supportive, etc. Obviously those things shouldn't make any difference at all, none of it is anyone's business until the legal date you need to tell them, but in real life I know they do.

It's specialised in that I'm the only one in the department who can teach it. I don't think it would be difficult to get an (external) postdoc to take over - there are certainly plenty of them floating around! And yes, students have chosen some of my modules based on research interests (there are waiting lists etc to get onto them).

Letting them know before term started would mean letting them know sometime in the next 2 weeks ie at 6 weeks. Is that ridiculously early?

It doesn't sound like you are quite as specialised as some, then, if there is a reasonable chance that a replacement candidate could be found.

It's the examining/marking that would worry me, as that might be the hardest thing to replace, if students end up being examined on a specialist topic that you have taught, but have no-one to available to mark. Some of that might be solved by pre-planning, though.

Whether to say anything before term starts might also depend on what you think they could do about it at that point, to make things easier. Would they cancel your course and tell students to choose something else? Would they plan on your course going ahead, and just start the lookout for potential replacements/guest lecturers in advance, or have someone sit in on some of your course in order to be able to mark it? Would they change the questions chosen for exams? Would the timetable more of your lectures in the first term? If there's nothing really that they can do in advance, then telling them before term starts might not be useful; telling them relatively early so that they can be scouting potential replacements can happen any time.

It might also be worth thinking about whether this is going to happen again; if this pregnancy doesn't work out, but you are hoping to be pregnant again at some point, then you might be wanting to think about back-up plans more generally - courses split between two specialisms, so that they could become heavier in one direction or the other if needed; examiners prepared to mark your subject if needed; a wide variety of specialist courses offered so that students aren't counting on yours being available in any given year; etc. Again, it's no-one's business whether you are or aren't planning to have children, but it could be discussed in more general terms (or more specific, depending how you get on with the HoD or colleagues! I know a doctor friend did discuss all sorts of possibilities within the practice about what might happen should she get pregnant, even before it was actually the case, but that's perhaps different because they had a joint stake in the management of it all. But still, planning for such eventualities - and it doesn't have to be pregnancy, could be long term sick leave or whatever else - could still be broached).

Congratulations, MaudGonne! I suspect you may be in my field...?

My son was due at the end of March, and the majority of my teaching was in semester 2 - I told my HoD on September 1st, long before friends and family, because of timetabling issues and hiring my cover. I was trying to figure things out in my head, exactly like you, and anticipating ill-concealed on HoD's part, but in fact he gave me a hug, was extremely supportive when I was hideously morning sick, and made me realise that all academics, however specialised, are eminently replaceable. I did switch a postgraduate seminar into semester one.

I know we are all replaceable! I suppose it's the conscientious side of me that doesn't want to make things difficult for my department/students.

I might be in your field, 3rdsymphony! She was really called that by Dublin wags.

There always is a very wide variety of specialist courses offered, and part of our teaching offer is that at advanced undergraduate level we teach courses directly related to our research interests. So splitting it between 2 specialisms wouldn't really work (and would also be subject to staffing fluctuations). But I take your point about the marking - I would hope to teach the bulk of the year, but the marking concerns me as well. Advance notice may help with lining that up, I agree.

Well, looking at your dates, I'd say it's all fairly convenient from the POV of an HoD, if you have a healthy pregnancy. Most of the face to face teaching will be done by the end of March, and you can go on ML for the Summer term. And who knows what/when/how you'll return. I'd be planning for you not to be around for the next academic year, so would be reallocating your generalist teaching & not planning on having your specialist teaching that year.

My attitude is that it'd be much the same if you had a fellowship or grant that bought you out. Except that statutory maternity pay cover is rubbish money to your employer, so mostly universities don't do much about a maternity cover, except possibly upping the part-time teaching budget. But I've always had to argue for that, so it's not a given.

Even as an HoD, I've always been really pleased for colleagues when they have a wanted pregnancy & I assume that if they tell me then it's wanted/welcome/planned (I don't tend to hear about terminations or miscarriages). It is a managerial hassle, but it's one of many, and it's usually something to celebrate. That is, unless you mess people about.

The main thing as an HoD I'd be thinking about would be covering your marking, as it looks as though covering your teaching this academic year won't be necessary - I'm being optimstic that it'll be a straightforward pregnancy & you'll manage pre-natal appointments etc around your teaching schedule. As we are so often told, pregnancy's not an illness (although when I tried that on one colleague she was extremely rude, offended, and accused me of being anti-woman & anti-family, which was a really low blow, as I was picking up her teaching on top of my workload).

So I'd talk marking options through with you, asking you what you thought we could do about covering it. There may be a couple of options:
a) someone else picks it up in May, which would require you to do a bit more during the two terms you're there to balance out the workloads;**
b) you could re-schedule your marking so it is done before you go on ML (again, assuming you pregnancy is fine - I hope it is and you go on ML a week or so before your due date - well, that's what my colleagues have done. So you'd shift essay due dates up so you could mark before you go on leave.
c) It's trickier if it's exams, but then I think you are not going to be able to make a fuss about other people marking your courses, no matter how specialised they are.

** I know some people will say that this is unfair as when you're on ML, you're on ML and the increase in someone else's workload is not your responsibility but I tend to hope that colleagues are, well, collegial. But what would I know, as a childless person . I'm assuming you're reasonable & not so determined on your rights as to not see how your actions have an impact on other people - in general terms of course, not specifically about ML etc etc.

From an HoD POV it's all about being reasonable & flexible on both sides. One thing about that is that planning for 2016-17 will start pretty well in October 2015 - this may not be what you do, but I imagine your HoD is already thinking about 2016-17. So you need to give her/him as much notice as you reasonably can. At the 12 week point is reasonable it seems to me, or if you feel comfortable, earlier would be fine. But please don't swear your HoD to more than the usual confidentiality. S/he is going to need to plan & that may involve talking to the Dean etc about the situation.

It's all very well other posters saying that covering your ML isn't your problem. To a certain extent it's not, obviously. But only an unreasonable person would be deliberately unaware of the impact of their choices/decisions on other people's. This goes for all sorts of leave: getting a Fellowship, taking unpaid leave, sick leave for elective surgery (obviously not acute or necessary surgery etc etc). So deal openly and frankly - much in the manner you'd like to be dealt with.

Of course this is all predicated on your HoD being the paragon that I obviously am But seriously, I've always been really pleased when colleagues have babies. I really love babies, even if I was unable to have my own. THe other stuff will get worked out, as long as you're not unreasonable in helping it to get worked out. My price for being reasonable has always been to have a good cuddle of the new born when my colleague comes in to visit!

For obvious reasons I have no advice - I'm not even in the ed. biz. - but loads of

Thanks for such a thoughtful post Multi Yes, I reckon that all going well I will be around for much of the teaching time in Semester 2, and hopefully with some notice we can figure out the marking (exams, so not possible to bring it forward). I'm fairly flexible and willing most of the time, so I would hope that we can sort something out. It's all such an unknown quantity to me though - but I suppose this is the first of unknown territories that are ahead!

Thanks to you talk Andrew.

I think I told around 8 weeks. Maybe 9. Only because timetables were being arranged and it felt mean not to say I would not be around. I ended up on ML early due to v prem birth so my cover had not started at that point. I did ask for it not to be common knowledge until 12 weeks.

Morning all!

We're moving this over to the shiny new Academic's Corner topic now, at the request of the OP.

Thanks AmyMumsnet

Any more advice received. My HoD emailed me yesterday asking me to be the department's rep on an institution wide scheme which will run from Feb-June. I didn't know what to say so said yes

And then remind your HoD in a staff meeting in November or so, that you'll need to be replaced in May.

Do it in a staff meeting when other colleagues are there, once your pregnancy is known about generally, and then that forces a colleague to volunteer!

Do it until you go on leave (if you want to and it is useful to you).

I have been HoD in a field specialised enough that we can't cover teaching from within. Maternity leave is fine you get plenty of notice (I told work st 20 weeks with both my pregnancies!.

We have much harder cases to deal with e.g long term sick etc when you are not sure when or if someone will return.

You are lovely and thoughtful but don't worry too much/ finding a workable solution is our job