Really nobody cares about your pregnancy

[Dragonfruitcocktail]

I'm a self-employed professional. I work directly with clients and not in a corporate environment, but I represent clients and work with corporate lawyers and professionals in high end firms, and have ongoing relationships with these contacts.

I am early pregnancy and feeling somewhat self-conscious of my pregnancy to these corporate contacts in that 1. I am probably not working at my maximum ability right now 2. it's a pregnancy number I dare not mention on MN (it's number 5).

YANBU - yes, they will think you can't manage it all and not capable of handling the work properly. And probably you're a little strange for having so many kids.

YABU - nobody cares. Get on with the work and get on with your life. As long as you deliver they will think good for you, keep going.

It's not really the pregnancy that's relevant.

It's about how honest you are with your clients about deadlines and capacity, managing their expectations, and communication.

If you're trying to pretend everything is fine when it's not, that's when you'll run into trouble.

It really is not their business.
I have been self employed in the past, and y observation would be that, as long as I delivered , on time, good quality work, and was easy to work with, my clients were happy.
They were not paying good money to care about me as they might an employee.
Hope you feel better and have a safe and happy pregnancy.

I made the decision to mention my pregnancy at work when it might have been relevant to my request.
So I mentioned it when I had to ask a colleague to handle some samples for me that I couldn't anymore due to the risk to the baby.
I mentioned it to the person I worked closely with and had regular meetings with throughout the week as there were a lot of appointments in my calendar for a while and I also had pretty bad pregnancy sickness. It was all day sickness but at lot worse before 1 so I requested any meetings that needed a lot of joy attention to be after 1.
I made this decision after a friend had a hard time when she stopped doing things at work that she couldn't do because of being pregnant but didn't want to tell people she was pregnant so her colleagues thought she was avoiding work.
So I would mention it when it is relevant for decisions you are making about your work

I wouldn't take on a project that would risk overrunning into very late pregnancy, but other than that, you're fine. Just be upfront about things that may affect work and timelines, like hospital visits or any issues that may arise in later pregnancy (although I hope it's all smooth for you).

Congratulations on number 5! You must have a wonderfully busy house 😄(currently pregnant with #3, and hope to have #4 shortly afterwards)

If you can do the job it's not relevant, in a business setting no I dont give thought to pregnancy in other people

If you need to bring up pregnancy as an excuse then don't be in the business, again if not then it's not relevant

This is why I didn’t tell work until I legally had to. I felt fine, I didn’t want to be viewed differently (very male dominated industry). Luckily I had an easy pregnancy and worked up until I gave birth.

If you're self-employed then you are literally there to deliver stuff without clients having to think about your development, health, personal issues, holiday requests etc. Yes, some may become closer along the way but there's no way I'd be putting ideas in their head about competence or availability until much later down the line.

Tell them you're really busy right now with a new contract and renegotiate some of your delivery times to give you a bit of headspace to deliver to the usual level (which I bet you are doing anyway).

It's rubbish and a bit isolating being self-employed sometimes and this is one of those times. I've a standing relationship with another freelancer where we'll 'call in sick' to each other (we don't actually work together!) to get a bit of sympathy and 'when will you be back at work' vibes. I get that you want someone to care, but it's not your customers unfortunately.

Exactly this.

Agree with this. As to it being your fifth baby, sone people won’t even ask because they don’t care and aren’t interested, some people will think that’s lovely, some people will think you must be nuts, some people won’t have an opinion either way. There’s no point second guessing it.

Thanks all the replies are so reassuring