telling your boss and/or co-workers

southbride

How did you go about explaining to your boss about needing to be off so much for dr. visits? The first time around my boss was a female and really understanding and I felt comfortable to tell her but this time I have a new Male boss and I am not so sure of how to go about telling him. I feel like I should explain but I don't want to give him too much information if you know what I mean. And I don't really tell alot of people about our situation. Should I just be honest when they ask?

Ali212

I was fortunate that many of my monitoring visits were before 9am (the RE office opened at 7am so I would just go as early as possible) so I didn't need to explain too much.  Personally, I think it's actually easier to explain to a male boss...they're more likely to get flustered / overwhelmed and just give you whatever you need unlike some females (by the time I got to my 4th IVF after also having 5 IUIs, I had to explain due to conflicts between my ET and a business trip and after that, my female boss asked a LOT of questions).  A lot of it depends on how open you want to be.  I personally wasn't that open during my struggle - not b/c I was embarrassed but more b/c I didn't want to deal with too many questions while I was still going through it myself.  If you're feeling more like I did, I would just say you have a personal health matter and leave it at that, at least at first.

desabean

Well, I am very open, pretty close with my boss (who is a woman), and have a pretty firm "open communication" policy with my staff where I would expect them to keep me posted if they had a medical issue that they knew would result in them missing a fair amount of work on a routine basis-- so I feel strongly about doing the same with my boss.  So, my answer is that you should tell him. 

I would tell him during your scheduled supervision, if you have it or ask to have some time to meet.  If you are not comfortable giving details, I don't think you need to. Just let him know that you have some medical issues that are going on that, while not serious or life threatening, will require some flexibility for frequent appointments over the next month or so.  I would give as much detail about the time you will miss as you can ("I will need to have two procedures that will require 2 days of bed rest that I may not have exact dates for until a couple of days ahead of time, but will inform you once I know")

With that said, unless you think giving them the head's up that you are planning to be pregnant again could endanger your job security, I would recommend just telling him the whole truth "I'm going through an IVF cycle and I'm going to need to come in late several days a week and will need 2-4 days of leave for medical procedures associated with the IVF".  Otherwise, you just fuel speculation and that rarely ends well.

Good luck!

Dr.Loretta

I told my bosses I had a non-life-threatening medical condition that would require a series of dr visits. That I would try and make them early or late in the day, and would make up the time. They were fine with it.

tnkrbl21

Being a teacher, even the early monitoring hours interfered with me getting to work on time.  Heck I even had to miss both the first and last days of school for FETs / IVFs.  I just told him flat out that we were doing IVF and that was enough for him.  He didn't need any other details and he was more than happy to get me the coverage (even covered a few classes himself for me) when I needed it. 

browneyedgrl4282

With my first IVF cycle I was working 11pm to 7am shift, which in itself was a pain in the arse with monitoring since the time slot for that was 6am to 730am.  Thankfully i talked to my RE and they allowed to arrive a little late so I could get it all done. My 2nd IVF told my boss that I need to leave by 6am for medical testing for a short while. He was fine with that. My HR knew I was doing IVF but we were friends and she was very supportive. I also told her because she gave me keys to the small meetings room (no cameras in there) because I needed to do my injections while at work, including PIO so DH had to come in every night to do so. DH worked during the day and at night helped out at his friends bar so he would come to my office right before heading in.