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working mamas
i have been in a panic/seriously stressed out about preparing to be out the office. mainly i'm worried he'll decide to make his appearance really early and I won't have finished wrapping up things/tidying things up.
i guess a large part of it is that our office is just my boss and me (plus the students I have that work for me). i just can't seem to keep up with the day to day on top of planning on being out of the office. is there anything in particular you did ahead of time that was particular useful for being out? any thoughts/advice?
i guess i'm mainly just venting cause i'm so stressed about this... i guess i know what i ought to be doing to prepare but just can't seem to find the time... sigh.
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Re: working mamas
I did the best I could. I cross-trained a colleague for the last 2 months I was working and kept my boss in the loop on everything, but then I was answering emails in the labor room because I was induced unexpectedly.
Just plan the best you can. They'll be able to figure it out in a pinch.
Are they back-filling you while you're out? Do you need to train anyone?
I had to transition clients to internal resources with both my leaves. I was early with Baby N and had her the morning of one of my transition meetings. Fortunately - I'd documented everything important as far as status of account, actions items, contacts, risks, etc prior to going. My last 2 weeks, I basically would update my google doc everyday when I worked with the client - just short notes to keep it as up to date as possible.
For my largest clients - I'd pulled in resources early to train them and pull them into meetings to begin getting them up to speed on everything. I basically had the resources shadow me for a while and then begin to lead a few meetings, etc right before I left so they could make sure to have me there for any support.
I still got calls on my leave. It wasn't too big of a deal (with one exception). Overall just start organizing what needs to be covered, who needs to cover it and start working with that person now to get them up to speed.
And remember - they can and will survive without you for a while!! Don't stress too much!
I guess that's what's stressing me out. We've been going on the assumption/hope that i make it full-term or near... which means the little day-to-day stuff will get taken care of by students. But if this baby comes early like march/early april... we have a lot going on in the spring and the deadlines/events that i'm working on now/planning... well there really isn't a back-up other than the students. I'm working on task-lists/checklists for stuff that needs to be done for those events but I guess I don't have a whole lot of confidence that there is legit back-up and i don't have anyone that I can particularly train.
if baby doesn't show up early, i'm really not worried but i just keep thinking if he comes at 35 weeks or something... i'm screwed. lol.
i guess i just need to get over it! lol.
There wasn't much I could do to prepare to be out. Basically, when I left there was no one to do my job. They just referred patient's out for care until I returned. I did want to have all of my charts and documentation done when I left the office. I couldn't leave patient's medical charts uncompleted for three months. As I got to the end of my pregnancy, I was trying to make sure all of my documentation was done at the end of the day and things were wrapped up. I stayed late almost every evening to make sure that happened. However, I too was induced somewhat unexpectedly. Ironically, I was induced the day before a scheduled paperwork catch-up day. So I left the office totally disorganized with all sorts of things undone and boom... I was in the hospital next day having my baby. I ended up going in to the office about a week after delivery to finish my chart documentation. I even brought DD with me.
My point... you can't plan for everything and no matter how hard you try, there's a decent chance something is going to screw it up. Try not to stress about it. You can always run in to the office for a short time after baby is born if there is a total disaster. My moto... it's only work and my family is more important.
I documented everything I did--creating and adding to existing timelines, maintaining my contacts lists, etc.--as I completed tasks. Basically, I created a mini-training manual. I also started copying my boss on emails that were really important, to keep her in the loop. They did hire a temp to fill in while I was out, and I did my best to train her and even started shifting duties to her in the last few days. DD was due Feb. 21 and starting at the beginning of February, I would leave my office everyday with the idea that people needed to be able find things and function should I not be in the next day. Since DD was born a week early, this proved to be helpful.
I had my baby and was on maternity leave during the absolute busiest time of year. Seriously, everything big that I handled happened during that time. However, people figured things out and managed. I made it clear that I wasn't going to be available unless it was an extreme emergency, and I didn't receive a single phone call while on leave. You just have to prepare as best you can and trust that things can get done while you're out. And guess what? They will!
I ended up being out for nearly a week around 29 weeks when I went into preterm labor. That was enough to be a reality check to my co-workers that they needed to get a handle on my duties. From that point on, they took over quite a bit of my work just to make sure they could do it.
But really, we just did our best to take me out of the loop gradually. Other people would do the majority of my work, and if they needed backup or had questions, I was available.
In the end, once you go into labor & are our, they'll figure it out!
The only thing I did was write out how to turn on my out-of-office notification and put it on a sticky on the side of my monitor in case I went into labor and didn't come back to work to turn it on myself.
Other than that, I didn't really worry about it. But I had coworkers and they weren't filling my position while I was out, so I didn't have to worry about who was going to do the work or training anyone new.