Job offer in early pregnancy

[TeddySunflowers]

I applied for a job before knowing/being pregnant and have pretty much this week discovered I am both almost 6 weeks pregnant and have been offered the new job. I will 100% be continuing with the pregnancy. DH and I have been trying for four years and only a few months ago a fertility consultant told me I should give up hope of having biological children, it was extremely upsetting, so this pregnancy is a miracle for us.

The offer is better money and better benefits and my notice period is a month.

But I don't know what to do. Should I tell the hiring manager before making a decision to accept/reject the offer? I don't want to come across as dishonest and I don't want to start a new role and immediately piss everyone off by being pregnant but I also don't want to lose the opportunity either.

Any advice would be welcome.

No, at 6 weeks say nothing.

Pregnant women (surprise surprise) need to earn a living.

We had this exact thing in my company, and I TOTALLY understand why the new recruit said nothing until after her start date.

She was advised to say zero. Was apologetic, but you know, pregnant women have bills and need to eat!

Not quite the same but I changed jobs on maternity leave but told them I wasn’t planning on starting for a few months.

I think you have two options:

1. tell them. If you want to move and make sure the culture is right for you, tell them. Their reaction will tell you everything about the job and the culture and you can decide if the job is right for you.

2. don’t tell them until you need to at 25 weeks. Protect yourself, make sure your good performance up to that point is well documented and be prepared to fight if they made you redundant. If you don’t think the culture is right then you’ll need to do this. Use the increased salary to save what you can to cover maternity leave.

Note if you may need to claim universal credit that Maternity Allowance will be deducted in full from your maximum. Maternity pay including SMP is treated as wages and has the work allowance and taper. That means just financially consider how secure DH job is.

Tell them. If you take the role and the pregnancy is successful you will not be entitled to maternity pay, and you may not be entitled to maternity allowance (depending on start dates).

But they may be able to work something out. Especially if they are a public sector employer.

Will you be WFH or office based? You also might not start for a good few weeks and by then you will be over the worst of it. Unless you get HG.

I have/had HG, and the gap between my last job and the new one was a godsend!

Only mild HG fortunately, but still made me an absolute wreck through the worst of it.

Not a cats chance in hell would I tell them.

I told my new employer, they seemed pretty annoyed but diplomatic, I later miscarried which they were sympathetic about but I was passed over for any training/education opportunities. There was always a "reason" but it just felt like they expected me to announce I was pregnant at any point.

When I did fall pg I didn't tell them until 24 weeks, but I was fortunate to be WFH (with a sick bucket under my desk!)

I was in your position, job offer Friday, positive pregnancy test Monday. Take the job, say nothing at this stage. I lost out on occ maternity leave and just got maternity allowance because of the move but it was 100% worth it.

Will you still be entitled to good.maternity pay?