To start a new teaching job pregnant?

[Youreatragedystartingtohappen]

Hi all

I'm currently looking to apply for a teaching position to start in January and have found out I'm pregnant.

Aside from the fact I don't even know if I would qualify for maternity pay in this situation how unreasonable am I being? I know I might not get the job and the pregnancy might not last (previous miscarriages) but essentially where I am is awful and I need to get out. I'm thinking go for it but I do feel the guilt quite acutely...

You wouldn't get the enhanced maternity pay, or SMP, but provided you've worked something like 26 of the previous 66 weeks, you'd get maternity allowance, which is the same as the SMP flat rate.

You can start maternity leave up to 11 weeks before due date, if you want to work out how long you'd have to stick it out in your current job - but if you wanted the enhanced maternity pay you'd have to go back for 13 weeks afterwards too.

They're not allowed to discriminate against you for maternity, so if you got the job and then told them about the pregnancy, they'd have to grin and bear it. It probably won't endear you to them, but on the other hand it would be so annoying not to go for the job if the pregnancy then doesn't last. They don't have to know that you already knew you were pregnant. I do know someone who discovered she was pregnant shortly after getting a job - the school were very nice and polite about it - she was still there many years later, so they got their value out of her eventually.

It's going to be harder to get a new post applying once you're obviously pregnant (whatever the rules about discrimination, if there's another person who meets the person spec, they can easily find some non-pregnancy reason to prefer them).

You should feel no more guilt than a man with a pregnant wife should feel about going for a new job. I know it isn’t intuitive to do that for obvious reasons, but you are entitled to maternity leave and need to try and train yourself to think that way.

So I would not let “guilt” come into my decision making, however I would be considering if it is the right thing to do in terms of entitlements plus the general upheaval.