[Anonymous]

I’m expecting my first baby at the end of June and one of my biggest struggles has been deciding what to do after maternity leave. I always thought I would be this big career woman but over the past couple of years, I’ve realized that’s not where my first priorities necessarily are. While all of my friends who are having kids in the next six months know that they’re going back to work full time after 3 months, I have swayed back and forth on what I’m going to do. I’ve even strongly considered being a stay at home mom for a few years and doing part time bookkeeping or something from home, just to have “something” to keep up with my career.

So anyways, a few weeks ago I had talked to my manager and told him that I was thinking that working from home would be the best option for me (two of my coworkers work exclusively from home, a few of them work from home about 70% of the time, and I’ve always had the option of working from home when I want to). He essentially said that whatever I decided worked the best for me, they would make work for them. He even said that if I decided I wanted to be a stay at home mom and didn’t want to come back, he would fully support me. The conversation ended with him saying that he wasn’t going to set anything in stone right now because he knows that things will change over the next few months but that he would support what I wanted to do.

Today, he had to make a tentative 2015 plan and has me down for three months of maternity leave and a bunch of in town projects and audits between now and then. While everyone else is out doing international audits in April, he has me doing a project in the office because he knows that I don’t want to travel internationally while I’m pregnant. I know he has international audits scheduled in October but I don’t know who he has scheduled on them. He did say that he knows that babies don’t come on time and that my maternity leave could start in July rather than June and so it would run later than what he has on the schedule. The biggest thing I’m worried about is that they’re expecting me to travel out of the country for two weeks right when I get back from maternity leave and that’s just not something I’m willing to do for numerous reasons, the main one being that I would still be exclusively nursing during that time. However, I’ve never particularly like to travel for work and so while they travel 4-5 times a year internationally, I was only out once in 2014. They know I’m really interested in things like fraud, so they let me do all these great projects and they’re even buying an ACL license for me so that I can do more things with fraud using data analytics. All that to say, they’re very accommodating.

Considering that he said he knows things will change, I’m trying to figure out the best time to sit down with he and the VP of my department and go over my REAL plan for leave and returning to work. I’ve already talked to him once but it was more of “here’s what I’m thinking” discussion. I’ve also already met with HR and gotten that side of things figured out. My manager knows what I’m thinking but does tend to be a little forgetful. However, everyone in my department tends to be extremely flexible and accommodating. I’ve been here for over two years, I’m in line for a promotion, and always get consistently great reviews so there’s no reason why they should be unwilling to work with me. My initial thoughts were to wait until late May/early June, so that I can come up with a solid plan and it will also be closer to my due date, and talk to both my manager and the VP so that no one can forget and everyone is in the loop, and go over everything like plans for working part time at first and then working from home and not wanting to travel for a specific period of time.

Thoughts on this? Sorry for the rambling- I just need advice from women who have been there, done that. I never realized how big of a decision this would be until I was put in the position to make it. Also, anyone who is or was a “work from home mom”, I would love input on how you made this work.

[jeff]

Hey Amanda! Congrats to you!!

Some threads from the past that may help you:

https://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-9957438159924060:2527624570&ie=UTF-8&q=working+mom&sa=Forum+Search&ref=www.another71.com/cpa-exam-forum/#gsc.tab=0&gsc.q=working%20mom&gsc.page=1

Jeff Elliott, CPA (KS) | Another71 | NINJA CPA | NINJA CMA | NINJA CPE

[Dantrick]

I quit my full-time job 3 1/2 years ago to be a stay at home mom. I decided to change careers from a social worker to a CPA and I am working on studying for the exams. Needless to say three kids later I am so ready to go back to work, lol. My youngest just turned one a week ago. I am glad I got to stay home with them, especially for their first year as a nursing mom it helps a lot. There is no way I could work from home and have my kids at home. Trying to study during the day sucks bad.

[mla1169]

My gut is that your manager “scheduled” international travel for you because you haven't proclaimed what your intentions are and he doesn't want to be thought of as “discrimination” by making decisions based solely on your new status ( which is brilliant from a management perspective.) sounds like they anticipate any number of scenarios but I will tell you this; if being a stay at home mom or working from home had been financially feasible for me, nothing would have swayed me otherwise.

If you intend to work from home have some help at your disposal whether a nanny or daycare for a few hours a week. You'll find quickly a child won't let you pee, let alone shoot an email off to a client 😉

Congratulations! Remember if your life was the face of a clock, the time you have little ones is less than 5 minutes. Make the most of every single one of them!

FAR- 77
AUD -49, 71, 84
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BEC -75

Massachusetts CPA (non reporting) since 3/12.

[Anonymous]

I would say yes, definitely sit down with your manager and the VP when it is closer to your due date and inform them officially of what you I tend to do. It is wonderful that you have such flexibility with your job. That is very rarely the case. If you decide to work from home, then I agree that you should indeed get some kind of part time Nanny/childcare or else you will never get anything done. Once the baby gets older you can always gradually start going back to work in the office if that's what you want. Congratulations!!!!!!!

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone!

I did sit down with him 3-4 weeks ago to talk about my plans for after maternity leave- I told him that what I thought would work the best for me was to work from him & he said they could make that work. It was right after my annual review and I just wanted him to know what I was thinking and to see if working from home would be a possibility. Just kind of wanted to get a sense for what would be feasible and so he would get an idea of what I wanted to do, so I wasn't springing anything on him a month before I left. He was surprisingly on board with anything I wanted to do.

And yes, the plan will be to have a nanny eventually. I will see how it goes the first month when I go back hopefully part time and then probably do a nanny share with a friend. I would love to just be a full time stay at home mom and we could financially swing it but I'm worried about setting my career back- that's really one of the only reasons I want to continue working. But, because of that, daycare and actually going back to the office full time is not something I'm really willing to do. It's kind of frustrating how hard this decision is for women- my husband gets his three weeks of paternity leave and then goes back to work. Whereas this is a decision I've been struggling with since the day I found out that I was pregnant!

[Author]

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