I'm a junior doctor who has recently started a non-clinical office job and I am 32 weeks pregnant - I plan to go on maternity at 39 weeks for 3 months. My job is lovely - it's 9-5 and the workload is more than manageable. While my seniors and manager have been very supportive about my pregnancy and maternity leave (my consultant and manager have told me several times to consider taking longer!) my junior doctor colleagues have been a bit less supportive.
I work with 2 female and 1 male junior doctor (none of them have children and it is probably important to highlight that having children as a junior doctor isn't really the norm - most people wait till they are a Consultant but in my case accidents happen!) and they will not be able to hire maternity cover as my role is very specialist and it takes almost 1-2 months to get used to the job and systems so a 3 month cover would be pointless (and if anything create extra work for the team) and it is difficult for this reason to also hire ad hoc bank staff.
My colleagues have expressed (in front of me) in front of me how me going on maternity will create extra work for them and will impact them taking leave over Christmas. The female colleagues are more empathetic when expressing this (i.e. saying that it's not my fault and they will just have to prioritise), however the male colleague in particular is very very vocal about how my maternity leave is going to increase his workload and constantly (literally every other day) spearheads conversations in our shared office about how unfair it is for them/how they're going to struggle to cope and how about he is going to demand to our manager that they need 3 month maternity cover (which is not going to happen). It's really annoying and he literally acts like I'm going to be sitting at home for 3 months chilling rather than trying to cope with a newborn baby.
I do not disagree with the fact that there will be more work for them to do but realistically the additional workload among the 3 of them will not be that much - e.g. two of them were on holiday recently so me and my colleague were covering and the additional work was not at all stressful or taxing. We were able to complete all our tasks, while also doing additional career progression tasks and taking adequate breaks for lunches/coffee. Similarly, I have had not had any sick days whereas they all have and have never complained about having to do extra work because they have not been able to come in (especially as the workload is more than manageable!). In terms of taking time off over Christmas, we do not work BH anyway and we always had to have 2 people in the office so not everyone was going to be able to have an extended Christmas break.
Anyway - it's a little awkward when they are having these conversations about my maternity leave when I am sitting there in the office (even with the girls saying it's not my fault, I have every right to take maternity, etc). I'm wanting to say something next time the conversation starts because it makes me feel uncomfortable everyone talking about me and basically complaining how me getting pregnant impacts them - does anyone have any ideas of what to say that is polite but also straight to the point?