Being pregnant isn't a lot of fun. However, many women choose to take on the morning sickness, body changes, and emotional outbursts because they know the payoff is truly worth it. Adding to your family is a joy, even though it may be a struggle to get there.
A supervisor wrote on Reddit that he recently learned one of his team members was pregnant, and it came at somewhat of a bad time — their busy season. Currently, his employees are not working remotely, so he's seen this particular coworker quite often.
"The end of the year is our crunch time, and it means that my entire team is putting in more hours than normal and everyone is expected to answer their phones and emails pretty much round the clock," he wrote. "Most of my team is doing great, except for one woman I'll call Cara. Cara told me two weeks ago that she is pregnant, and she is about 10 weeks along."
"The only reason she told me in the first place was because I had to write her up for not being as available as she needed to be," he said. "She was calling in sick at least once a week for the past four weeks, and when she was at the office she was not 100% focused on her work. She explained that she has severe morning sickness, and that she has been vomiting multiple times per day, and some days she needed to take off."
Things got dicey pretty quickly.
"I agreed to work with her, and told her that she can come in later and stay later if she needs to to get around the morning sickness, but she apparently is sick all day," he said. However, he seems to want to cement his place as the hero in this story, making other changes that other employers would have had no trouble making naturally. And that's when you can tell his resentment over the situation truly begins.
"I made other concessions, too," he said. "I am allowing time off for doctor's appointments and allowing her to take more frequent breaks throughout the day (apparently she can no longer eat a regular lunch, and must eat multiple times during the day?)." With a statement like this, it seems like he might think his coworker is making up some of these very factual claims.
Unfortunately, their arrangement didn't work — probably because every pregnancy is different and often hard to anticipate.
"This all seemed perfectly reasonable to me, as long as she held up her part of the bargain and maintained her productivity during this stressful time," he said. "Well, she has not. She has called out sick once already since then, and she has not made herself available for calls during off hours."
"My other staff is staying at the office until 8 or 9 in the evening, but Cara is out by 6 and apparently goes straight to sleep when she gets home and keeps her phone muted during that time," he said. "We have had to scramble to cover for her. Her work quality has also suffered, as apparently she has difficulty concentrating due to headaches and won't take anything for them."
Taking the same medications she would have before might not be wise. And for some women, a first appointment to talk about the birth doesn't happen until a few weeks later. That right there is further proof that this supervisor isn't fully aware of all of the changes that happen during this time, which is the most fragile of pregnancy.
For anyone currently pregnant, the next part of the story will make you cringe.
"I sat her down yesterday and relayed my concerns," he said. "She acknowledged how her lack of productivity has hurt the rest of the staff, but claimed that she is physically struggling a great deal. I told her that was no excuse, because she is only in her first trimester and barely even pregnant yet."
A simple Google search would have explained the process of pregnancy, but he didn't think to try.
"I also questioned whether it was fair to other women that she was using a normal bodily function as an excuse for low productivity," he wrote. "This is what women fought to counteract during the feminist movement. She said she understood and would try to do better." That, right there, is when she should have quit. But most pregnant women don't have that option.
She likely needs the job to be able to properly care for her new arrival.
Quitting while pregnant is probably not the smartest move right now. But her supervisor has put her in quite a bind. He told his wife about the story, who openly told him that he has no clue how hard pregnancy can be. His response? "I just think that it is unfair for an entire staff to pick up someone's slack because they made a personal decision to become pregnant."
Luckily, the Reddit community was quick to call this guy out. Is it frustrating that his coworker is sick due to her pregnancy? Of course. But acting this way isn't the right thing to do. "It sounds like she has HG [hyperemesis gravidarum]," Trania86 told the original poster (OP). "OP, you might not know what it is, but I am still recovering from it. It hits you in the first trimester, and before modern medicine, you could die from it. That's not me being dramatic, it's a fact. You vomit so much you start to dehydrate. You can fall into a coma. You can die from malnourishment."
Pregnant Redditors had no trouble telling him what it's really like.
"I'm 8 months pregnant with my 3rd and last kid and this has me fuming," said allsfairinwar. "I lost 10 lbs in the first 3 months of each pregnancy because I couldn’t eat anything. You literally feel on the verge of throwing up all day, and for me I threw up most of the day too. Not to mention the level of tiredness that I’d never experienced before. It’s like being on sleep meds all day. The first trimester is the hardest. For me around 4 months of utter misery. I could hardly function. Pregnancy is no joke and I’m thrilled we’ve decided to complete our family because I don’t think I have it in me to go through it again."
Redditor nitro9throwaway explained how bad these situations can actually be, by sharing her own upsetting story. "My HG was so mistreated that I had to have a medical miscarriage," she said. "It was a me or my baby moment and I'll never, ever forgive the doctor. 30 pounds down in my first 6 weeks. Couldn't even keep down water. Told me it was normal. 'Lots of women experience severe nausea.' Gave me anti-nausea meds that I couldn't keep down and told me to come back in a month. I got a second opinion 2 weeks later (clinics were packed) and was told that I should have been put on a feeding tube at my last appointment. I was already dying from malnutrition."
What Cara really needs is a doctor's opinion.
Right now, she's probably trying to balance everything at once. If the pregnancy is this severe, it's possible that there's more going on. Instead of being shamed by her supervisor, it would have been nice for him to show a little support. Pregnancy or not, many Redditors — like portezbie — feel as if the office environment setup isn't the healthiest. "Answering your phone around the clock? I just can't imagine a scenario where that is justified for an office job," they wrote.
While this supervisor may have been unknowingly harsh, it's important for everyone to realize the real risks of pregnancy, as they're not expressed as much. Women change so much, and so much is out of their control. Sickness can be extreme, and energy can be low. And with pregnancy, it's not as easy as drinking a cup of coffee to perk up — many doctors have strict rules when it comes to intake. It's good to recognize that compassion goes a long way.
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