Sorry all - it’s a long one and I posted in the work topic but only had one reply and hoping for a few more perspectives!
I’m in my early thirties and pregnant with my first child.
I work for a large international organisation in an industry which is typically male dominated. I’ve been at my current company for 5 years and specialised in my field for 10 years. I have worked extremely hard to become well qualified and experienced and become the Subject matter expert for what I do. As such the company created a management role for it 2.5 years ago which I successfully interviewed for.
Since telling my boss I am pregnant (around ten weeks ago - I had to tell her earlier than I wanted as I needed time for appointments and I trusted her to maintain confidentiality which she did) I feel I have been treated very differently.
Examples are:
I became frustrated at a situation where a colleague had been rude and unprofessional so I was feeding it back in our weekly team update and explaining how the situation was resolved. She (my manager) said “oh no pregnancy hormones kicking in!!” To which I firmly and clearly responded it had nothing to do with my hormones and that rude was rude regardless.
I am currently travelling for work and had an issue over email with a direct report. I find the people management bit harder to do than other parts of my role so sought her guidance on how best to handle, rather than steaming in and getting it wrong. She eventually responded with “I wouldn’t stress yourself out, you have bigger things to be thinking of” which I feel is reference to the pregnancy (knowing what other projects I have going on there is nothing outside of normal requirement at the moment that would be considered a bigger fish to fry!!)
Since telling her I’m expecting she has failed to attend a single one of my bi-weekly 1-2-1s always cancelling at the last minute - never more than a few hours in advance.
I also feel she has more and more undermined my decisions and guidance relating to my subject matter since announcing my pregnancy.
For context she is the senior manager for two departments and has openly said in the past that she likes managing me and my department because I just do it all and she never needs to get involved or worried but she also knows I need support to talk over larger projects and with securing stakeholder buy in for particularly challenging projects. It’s like she’s happy to have me when the department is a trophy (not being big headed but it is often recognised as a very well performing one!) but then when the going gets a little bit tough she washes her hands of it.
I feel so written off since advising her I’m pregnant and that I’m getting more and more upset by it, I’m sure it doesn’t sound like much but my career has always been so important to me and I’ve been clear that my plan is to return to work in the same role post mat leave so I don’t understand why I’m now having so many challenges!
Would it be worth me bringing it up with her and if yes how on earth do i do it?! It always seems to be so emotional for me to think about and I need it to be understood and taken seriously.
Thank you if you got this far and for any pearls of wisdom!