Pregnant on the Tenure Track: 12 Lessons Learned
March 2021: ~30 weeks pregnant and the 5 year anniversary of my campus visit for my current position (plus our due date paperchain countdown in the background)
As I enter the final few weeks of this pregnancy (I'm currently 37 weeks as I'm writing this), I've been thinking about some of the things I've learned since finding out baby #2 was on the way. It's also been interesting to compare this experience with my experience as a pregnant PhD student on the job market (which you can read about here, here, and here).
Today I'm sharing some of the main lessons I'm taking away from these past ~8 months of being pregnant as a pre-tenure faculty member. And since I still have a few weeks of pregnancy to go, I may come back and provide a few updates or do a part II for this post if anything else comes to mind after baby is born.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 1: Talk to HR early (and often)
Before talking to anyone in my department, I wanted to get as much info from HR as I could about what options I had for parental leave. I figured it'd be helpful to have a sense for how long I could technically be on leave before talking with anyone in my department. While I initially wanted to wait until I'd heard baby's heartbeat before meeting with HR; scheduling issues and covid prevented that from happening. I ended up having my first meeting with HR towards the end of my first trimester and didn't have my first in-person prenatal appointment until the beginning of the second trimester.
There was so much info to digest after that initial meeting with HR and a number of questions came up after I talked with people in my department, so I kept the lines of communication with HR open. I asked a number of questions via email and then set up a second meeting with them a few months before my due date because I promptly forgot everything they told me during the first meeting. I've continued to reach out via email as my due date gets closer since I've had to submit forms for leave and there's a bunch of things that need to happen shortly after baby is born (e.g., adding baby to my health insurance, notifying them of the birth so they know when my leave starts, notifying short term disability, etc.)
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 2: Talk to other people who have had babies pre-tenure
I talked to a number of people, inside and outside of my department, who had given birth before tenure. I started talking to people well before I actually got pregnant (and pre-covid), to hear about their experiences, learn how they handled leave, talk about tenure pauses, etc. It was helpful to hear from those who had done it before.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 3: Share the news when you are ready
Like I mentioned above with HR, I wanted to hear baby's heartbeat before actually sharing the news with people in my department. I did share with a few close colleagues/friends pretty early on and emphasized just how early it was. I also had a few people reach out about research and teaching related collaborations that wouldn't have been feasible given the timing of baby's arrival, so I shared with them as well and just asked that they keep things quiet.
Once I had that initial in-person prenatal visit where I got some reassurance that everything was going okay, I started officially sharing. I think this was in Nov or Dec (it's hard to remember!). Being 100% on Zoom made it feel a bit harder to spread the word as all those informal opportunities to share weren't really there. Had we been in person, I may have shared a bit earlier as "morning" sickness would have likely interrupted many a meeting. I shared with students in January at the start of winter term to a) share the news with them, b) let them know I was feeling like crap, and c) give them a heads up for me being on leave during spring term, as most of them continued on with me past winter term.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 4: Turn your camera off and mute your mic!
While being pregnant during the time of covid certainly comes with it's own set of challenges/anxieties, attending meetings remotely and having the ability to turn off my video/mute my mic has been amazing. No need to excuse myself because I have to puke, no need to try and hold back the dry heaving, no need to pack a massive bag of food... (the list goes on and on). Especially in the first trimester, there were many days where I struggled to drag myself out of bed due to exhaustion and nausea, or found myself sitting with my head over a trashcan. I attended many meetings (especially early on) from my bed or the couch with my camera and mic off, trying to save my energy for any teaching related activities where I wanted to have my camera on.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 5: Expect the worst and set your expectations really low
Because nausea, dry heaving, and to some extent, vomiting lasted pretty much all the way through my pregnancy with Ellie, I was anticipating the same with this pregnancy (though hopeful that it would be an entirely different experience). I figured I'd be miserable and that it'd be really hard to maintain my previous levels of productivity. Not to mention no preschool for Ellie due to covid and Mike's new part time job, which was a shift from our previous routine. Looking back, I'm amazed that anything got done this school year! I really had to take a hard look at all the things on my plate and decide what was necessary and what wasn't. Research took the biggest hit, though I did still manage to engage in some active data collection (focus groups and a survey). Teaching has taken (and is taking) a lot of my energy (as it does when I'm not pregnant) and I found I didn't have much left after those tasks were done. Between the 2019-20 school year where it felt like there was one family emergency after the next and then the 2020-21 school year with being pregnant, my capacity for thoughtful/deep work has plummeted. And I'm okay with that because I'm not a robot!
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 6: Say no!
Early on I decided that I needed to say no to anything new, and that's the strategy I used when people came to me with new opportunities. Did I always want to say no? No! But it was a helpful metric to use for decision making.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 7: Review all of your options for tenure
The 2020-21 school year marked my last annual review before my official tenure submission. I put together my annual review during the summer, doing most of the work before I was pregnant and before I started feeling terrible. Thankfully I was able to get that review in just fine. For my official tenure review, my materials are due this summer (2021) for external reviews and then the final version is due in the fall of the 2021-22 school year, right smack in the middle of when I'll be on leave. I thought through and talked through all my options with lots of people. I did come to a decision (which I had to make during the month of April), which I'll share in another post.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 8: Make decisions about what you will/will not do (work wise) during leave
In a perfect world, being on leave would mean that you're on leave and there were no work related expectations. But we all know that academia thrives off of work during non-work time. Having a solid idea about what you are/are not going to do when it comes to work before you go on leave is critical. Are you going to apply for that grant that's due during your leave? Are you going to prep your tenure materials? Are you going to prep for the courses you're teaching when you're back at work? What are you going to do about that R+R that's outstanding? Personally, I've tried to put as much on hold as I can, e.g., I ended up not submitting a few articles because I knew reviews would come back during leave. However, I'll probably end up doing some course prep this summer to make things easier on myself when I return to work. From a legal standpoint, working during the first 6-8 weeks postpartum when I'm on short term disability is a no-no, so I know that I'll be setting any and all work aside initially. Summer is a bit of a grey area, when I'm off contract and technically not using any sort of leave so this is likely when any sort of work that needs to be done will happen. And then fall term, when I'm using FMLA/sick time I'm also planning to set stricter boundaries.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 9: Make parental leave prep a project in and of itself
Prepping for leave (especially if you're going out at some point during the term and not during a regularly scheduled break) is a lot. Making sure all my teaching materials are organized for the people taking over, making sure research projects are wrapped up or at a good pausing point, making sure I've got all the forms filled out and am notifying the "right" people at the "right" time... there are a lot of steps in the process! Including leave prep as one of my projects for the year has been helpful in wrapping my head around all that needs to be done.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 10: Don't plan active data collection the month before your due date!
Ha! I had some funding that I was able to extend for a year. My extra year is up in June 2021 which means the funds need to be used by then. I'm sure I could have asked to see if another extension was possible, but I honestly didn't feel like it. So... I ended up co-leading some focus groups in April and sending out a survey (all related to postpartum experiences interestingly enough), and doing all of the logistical work to orchestrate these things (which was a lot). If I had to do it all over again, I don't know that I'd choose this route.
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 11: Don't teach new courses
I added a seminar that's connected to student internships to my course load this year, thinking that the prep would be minimal since it's discussion based. However, it's still a new (to me) course to get used to. I don't feel like seminar style courses play to my strengths. Plus, anything tied to internships means a lot of problem solving along the way. Had I not been pregnant, maybe this would have been fine. But I think in hindsight, I'd have preferred to teach an extra section of a course I had already taught many times before (even if that meant a lot more students).
Pregnant on the tenure track lesson 12: Figure out ways to reduce grading time
For spring term I ended up editing a number of assignments and also getting rid of activities that felt duplicative in order to ease the grading burden. I’ve also been heavily relying on feedback I provided in prior years and using it as a template for feedback this year, which has been a lifesaver! As my due date approaches, grading has felt particularly challenging and really slow going, so anything to help alleviate that is key!
There you have it, 12 lessons learned over these past ~8 months! Thinking about being pregnant as a tenure track faculty member about to go up for tenure in comparison to being pregnant as a PhD student on the job market… I’d probably choose being a faculty member, though they both certainly come with benefits/drawbacks. And maybe it’s not a fair comparison, having gone through the process before and knowing what was potentially in store. Definitely something I may explore in a future post!