Times today: businesswoman on going back to work four days after birth

[mrsbaldwin]

Interesting interview in the Times today, with Michelle Done, founder of Ultimo Bras, on going back to work 4 days after having a baby (following the Rachida Dati story of recent days).

Click here
women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article5518256.ece

I have also posted to In the News section.

My DH didn't even go back to work 4 days after DD was born, let alone me!

Aren't two weeks off compulsory for health and safety reasons?

More fool her

I'm assuming Bethany was an accident as I can't honestly see why you'd create that situation on purpose.

Assume she didn't have to take 2 weeks off because she is self employed?

So she 'had' to go back because she'd scheduled a launch for when she was due to be 39 weeks pregnant? How daft is that in the first place.

There is absolutely no business that can't manage without someone for at least a couple of weeks. Her company isn't that big, and if her presence at work is so essential that it would completely collapse to the extent that she 'wouldn't be able to pay her mortgage' if she took a few weeks off, then she is a very poor manager and delegator, and/or has made some very poor recruitment decisions for her management team.

She says she has OCD which no doubt contributed to her thinking that she absolutely had to go back straight away.

But she says throughout that she 'had no choice', and she also agrees that Rachida Dati 'had' to go back.

If it's because of OCD, she didn't have to, she has made a decision and with any decent level of self-awareness, would take responsibility for that decision and acknowledge that the OCD contributes to decisions like this.

I don't know, when it's your business and it's starting up and it's struggling, then yes, frankly I can see how it would collapse without you.

where I work, of course they can manage without me but then, I work for a huge firm and am one of literally thousands of people.

the founder of jojo bebe maman after one day for each!

As I've also posted to the other thread I was quite struck by FloweryBeanBags comment that it seemed a bit of bad planning, if you yourself were in control of a product launch, to launch it in the last few weeks of being pregnant and then not to have a couple of managers/people who could front up for you in place who could run the show for ten minutes (although I guess the demands of City bankers loaning you lots of money must require you show your own face from time to time).

That said, when running your own business it's practically obligatory to make to lots of mistakes and to look back with the benefit of hindsight saying 'I wish I hadn't done it like that, knowing what I know now I wouldn't have'.

I can't claim to know anything about selling underwear - and I guess there are better times of the year than others to launch a range of bras - but I'd be interested to know the answer to why she did the launch then rather than 3 months previously or six months later.

But as it was the launch of their first product, I'm assuming that there was no one else to do the job. And if you have a huge amount of debt to service, it does become vital that the work gets done then.

My colleague was back on email the day she came out of hospital after her caesarean (she is homebased anyway) as there is no way of getting any maternity leave cover for our posts, and she didn't want things to build up

Yes I guess you're right Cmot - no-one else to do these things at the start, when you're launching.

I must say though, reading what she writes makes me a bit glad I've taken some very conservative decisions about what contracts to do/business to take on whilst pregnant (I am expecting in March), even though I wouldn't normally play it safe and am hoping to be able to return to risk-taking (in the business sense) quite quickly.

And hats off (or maybe it should be bras off) to her for making the business a success