We recently got an email from a reader in law school who is pondering that common question: At what point in your career is the best time to have a baby? More specifically, should she have a baby during law school? I can’t WAIT to hear what the readers say — and at the start I’ll preface it with an important reminder that there is no right answer here. Here’s the reader’s question: 

Law student here. My partner and I have been together for 7 years and are starting to think about family planning. I’m curious if any of you had kids during law school and can speak to finishing school and starting a legal career with a baby at home? Or, did you start your family less than 5 years into practicing law, and what was that like? I’ll be 31 when I take the bar and am worried about taking maternity leave too early in my career. Any advice is appreciated!

Great question. We’ve talked about planning your career for babies, shared the planner’s guide to preparing for pregnancy, and discussed financially preparing for baby, but it’s been a very long time since we talked about the best time to get pregnant.

First, the caveat that is necessary with babies: It is very difficult to plan anything with babies. There is no rhyme or reason among friends regarding who got pregnant easily and who struggled, and there is no way to predict how you and your partner will react to the newborn phase, let alone predict whether you will have an “easy” baby or a “difficult” baby.

(And throw all of this out the window if you have a baby with additional needs, whether they’re premature, have a disability, or some other reason.) So whatever you’re planning, please paint with a broad brush, and be able to laugh (or, at least, not sob too hard) when things don’t go according to plan.

All that said, somehow a friend of mine did time a baby to be born during our 3L year — she had her daughter around spring break. (First infant I ever held!) That gave her some time to get ahead of her studies for 3L finals (some professors may have even let her shift tests/assignments earlier, if memory serves) and figure out the baby stuff before studying for the bar and hitting the law firm. She was actually one of our featured working moms to share a week in her life with us, and we asked her about it then. Here’s what she said many years after the fact:

If I could do it again, knowing what I know now, I would not have created the circumstances so I could get pregnant during my 3L (or, actually, during law school). … The coalescing of events in the three months between my daughter’s birth and taking the bar exam created craziness in my life that, under other circumstances, could have been disastrous. H was born at 6:20 a.m. on Saturday, March 29. It was awful and ended in a near medical emergency. Yet I was so scared I wouldn’t be offered a permanent job (I was interning for the Committee in the House of Representatives where I did end up working) that I returned to work on Tuesday, April 1.

My mother-in-law and my mom both were able to come to D.C. for extended periods of time to help my husband with the baby at night. If they hadn’t been there, my professional and educational life could have been wiped out! I half feel guilty for this, but both moms and my husband let me sleep as much as I could every night because I was back to work (interning 2–3 days per week), studying for full-time law school finals (mid-April), and then would be taking the bar exam (July).

Without the help I had, I could not have finished school, secured permanent employment, and passed the bar exam. On the other hand, H was born during a natural transition (between law school and my legal career) so I didn’t have to worry about the possible messages my pregnancy could be sending to my superiors about my career intentions (and other fears experienced by professional women trying to advance their careers while starting/expanding a family).

I mean: damn. Apparently I am acquainted with Wonder Woman. This all seemed totally normal to me back in my own 3L year, so I asked her a bit more about it now:

I don’t feel like it was Superwoman stuff because I wasn’t thinking about it — I literally was getting up each morning and doing what I had to do until it was time to go to sleep each night. Looking back on it, I’m sure I was exhausted but I was so focused on each day as unconnected from a pattern of days that I don’t remember feeling exhausted like I do now when I feel like I’ve been going for days on end.

I share this piece of advice whenever it’s appropriate: I learned to ski when I was 12, which is old because you’re no longer fearless. My family never skied. I went with a friend and her family to Mont St. Anne in Quebec and that’s where I learned. No bunny slopes there like we know here. I will never forget going way up with the ski instructor, getting off the lift, and turning to see how high up we were and how long it was to get down.

The instructor said to me, “You don’t have to ski all the way down. You only have to ski down the five feet right in front of you.” I am guessing he meant it literally and not as advice I’d apply the rest of my life to many non-skiing situations. But it is the best advice. I tell it to myself every time something seems too hard or too overwhelming. I am sure this is what I was telling myself over and over in those days. :)

I love this piece of advice!!

Back to the reader question at hand. What I might recommend is giving yourself specific windows of time to “pull the goalie,” so to speak. Look hard at your schedule and figure out when it would STINK to have a newborn, keeping in mind that from week 34 of pregnancy onward you will be exhausted and feel like a beached whale and that a healthy baby can come anywhere from week 34–42. I somehow know three different women who had (eventually healthy) babies at week 25, though — and multiples always come early! 

{related: the best birth control options in 2018}

Also, you should know that newborn fussiness/sleeplessness tends to spike at weeks 6–8 — and if you want to breastfeed, that can be pretty rough the first few weeks. (My lactation consultant told me to do a 30-minute pumping session every two hours, around the clock, for several days (a week?) to get my supply up.) 

So that gives you a pretty broad swath of time to avoid having a newborn during major endeavors, like studying for the bar or starting a new, intense job where they expect 60 hours of facetime a week. (I would argue that 3L finals are very different than 1L finals — it’s still not ideal, but it can be managed.)

My guess is that most law firms would be amenable to you starting your job in January rather than October if you were open to having an unpaid maternity leave (and could swing health insurance for yourself and the baby through your partner), but if you miss those windows, I’d put the goalie back in place until you’ve been at your job for three to four months at least (which in theory would give you a full year on the job before you had to take your maternity leave).

For the times when the goalie is back in place, I would still consider yourself in the pregnancy corridor in terms of health concerns like vitamins, shots, SSRIs, skin treatments, and so forth — you may also want to look at our tips on preparing for pregnancy.

Keep in mind that most pregnancies involve handling frequent doctor’s appointments — if it’s a high-risk pregnancy (including because of “advanced maternal age,” which is usually defined as 35+ but varies), you may have to go to the doctor’s office as often as once a week after a certain point in the pregnancy. (Here’s a sample appointment schedule from WebMD; I think with my second child I had to go once a week for at least the last 10 weeks.)

Make very sure you know ahead of time which benefits vest when — each office is different, but health insurance, maternity leave, disability leave, and even 401K benefits may not vest until you’ve been on the job for a certain amount of time.

(It is very, very, very expensive to have a baby, so I do not recommend doing it without health insurance. My healthy deliveries, with no major issues or surgeries, were both billed around $15K; we ended up paying maybe $2K for each child in deductibles and coinsurance.) 

Readers, what are your thoughts — at what point in your career is the best time to have a baby? Should one have a baby during law school? If you have tried to time a baby, what was your strategy, and how did you do? (Related question: How long do you think someone should be on the job before she leaves to have a baby?)

Stock photo via Stencil.

The post Should She Have a Baby During Law School? (What Point in Your Career IS The Best Time to Have a Baby?) appeared first on Corporette.com.

What are you all using for birth control these days? We thought that a good companion to our discussion earlier this year about how to decide if you want kids would be a roundup of the best birth control options in 2018, so that’s our topic for today. (We’ve also talked about planning your career for babies and shared the planner’s guide to pregnancy and in general have had many posts about family planning and pregnancy, including a guest post long ago from a reader on why she chose an IUD).

Over at CorporetteMoms, we recently explained what to consider when choosing birth control after having a baby — but whether or not you’ve had kids doesn’t have a huge impact on your contraceptive choices. Dr. Melissa Gunter, MD, an ob/gyn in Rochester, NY, says, “There is no method that is off-limits based solely on whether or not you’ve had a child.”

In addition to pointing out that the best type of birth control for you right now may not be the most appropriate choice for you a year from now (or five), Dr. Gunter recommends that you first decide on your must-haves for your ideal birth control: “Is it the method that you are least likely to get pregnant on? Then you want a Nexplanon [contraceptive implant] or IUD,” she says. “Is cycle predictability important to you? Then a pill, patch, or ring may be better. Do you prefer something which will also regulate or level out your reproductive hormones, or do you prefer how you feel with your own natural hormonal ups and downs? Do you want something you never have to think about, or are you OK remembering to pick up prescriptions and take your birth control every day, week, or month?”

Keeping those factors in mind, here are some of the best birth control options in 2018:

Birth control pill

• The combination pill (estrogen and progestin) is 99% effective when used exactly as directed — but with typical use, it’s more like 91%.
• The pill can bring lighter periods, milder PMS symptoms, a reduced chance of ovarian cysts, clearer skin, and other benefits (as well as certain side effects, such as nausea, headaches, bloating, and breast tenderness — although some side effects may be only temporary).
• It’s generally considered safe for healthy, non-smoking women over the age of 35 to take the pill (but that’s for you and your doctor to discuss).
• Late last year, a new study confirmed previous studies’ findings that the pill increases women’s breast cancer risk — and, of course, it made big news. How should women interpret these findings? “For most women, birth control pills will have a greater cancer benefit than risk,” says Dr. Gunter. “A woman who uses birth control pills, especially if used for 10 years or more, may reduce her risk of ovarian cancer by up to 50%. Endometrial cancer risk is also reduced in women who use birth control pills, especially for women who are obese or have irregular periods.” Gunter also notes that while 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer, the pill doesn’t significantly change a woman’s risk, and added, “Much of the data about breast cancer risk and birth control pill use comes from women whose pills contained higher doses of hormones than most currently prescribed options.”

Just because the pill is the preferred contraceptive among many women, that doesn’t mean you have to give it a try, Dr. Gunter says. “Many women still feel like they need to start with birth control pills first, and only switch to something else if they are bad at remembering the pill — while the pill is great for some women, there are plenty of other, easier-to-use methods,” she says.

IUD

• IUDs are extremely convenient and are 99% effective. Once they’re in, you don’t have to do anything other than remove or replace them in 3, 5, 7, or 10 years (depending on the type).
• “IUDs are safe and effective whether you’ve had children or not,” says Dr. Gunter, “however, some of the newer IUDs were specifically tested in teenagers and women who’ve never had babies before they received FDA approval.”
• ParaGard, the copper IUD is the only non-hormonal IUD. It can cause irregular, longer, and/or heavier periods, while the hormonal IUD (Mirena, Kyleena, Liletta, and Skyla) can lead to lighter periods (sometimes much lighter) and can make your cramps milder. Gunter stresses that hormonal IUDs work differently than other hormonal birth control — like the copper IUD, they prevent sperm from reaching the egg. “Other forms of hormonal birth control [prevent] a woman from releasing an egg,” she says. “The hormones in the IUD stay in and around the uterus, whereas the hormones in a pill, patch, ring, shot, or implant go all throughout the body. So a hormonal IUD will not help with cycle predictability, acne, PMS, ovarian cysts, or ovulation symptoms.”
• While getting an IUD placed can cause discomfort, especially if you haven’t had a baby, it only takes a few minutes. (Here’s some information on easing the pain, from … another Dr. Gunter (!) — in this case, Jen.) The insertion and removal of an IUD is the same for both types.

Condoms (male and female)

• Male condoms are 98% effective with perfect use — but with all use taken into account, they prevent pregnancy about 85% of the time.
• Condoms are the only birth control method in this list that can prevent STDs — and they’re a great choice if you want a non-hormonal option, too.
• If you or your partner have a latex allergy, other options are available. And whether you or not you’re allergic to latex, you can choose female condoms, which are made from nitrile and are about as effective as as male condoms (95% with perfect use vs. 79% in real life).

Permanent birth control

• The old standby, tubal ligation, is more than 99% effective. If you’re a young woman who doesn’t want kids, though, it may be difficult to get some doctors to take your request for sterilization seriously.
• Essure, a non-surgical procedure that blocks the fallopian tubes with metal coils and is 99% effective, will soon no longer be available.
• For a woman who doesn’t want to get pregnant (either again, or ever), the safest and most effective permanent birth control option is a vasectomy for her partner (more than 99% effective); however (perhaps not surprisingly), the vasectomy rate in the U.S. is about half of the rate of tubal ligations.

Newer options

• This month, the FDA approved the first vaginal ring contraceptive that can be used for an entire year: Annovera. It won’t be available until at least late 2019, so stay tuned.
• The FDA also allowed marketing of Natural Cycles, the first app that can be used to prevent pregnancy (although that’s caused some debate — including worries about privacy concerns).
• And what about birth control for men? A recent CNN headline announced, “Male birth control pill one step closer to reality, researchers say.” Again, stay tuned…

Two excellent websites for finding out more about any of the options above, and about the other types of contraception, are Planned Parenthood and the NIH website Medline Plus.

The information shared in this post should not be taken as medical advice. Please talk to your doctor. As Dr. Gunter says, “Every woman is tuned differently, and our bodies also change over time. We have all of these choices for a reason, so discuss with your doctor which birth control method is the best for you, and don’t be afraid to switch to something else if you are no longer happy with the method you are using.”

What is your preferred type of birth control? How long have you used it? What have been the pros and cons of the birth control you’ve tried? If you’ve switched, what were your reasons? If you’re married, did you change birth control methods when you were no longer single? If you’ve had kids, did you decide on new birth control after becoming a mom? 

Stock photo: Deposit Photos / jes2uphoto.

The post The Best Birth Control Options in 2018 appeared first on Corporette.com.

2019 Update: We still stand by this advice on how to decide if you want kids (don’t miss the comments!) but you may also want to check out our more recent discussion of whether you feel like you need to sacrifice kids for career.

Reader S wonders: how to decide if you want kids? She’s on the fence about motherhood and feels ambivalence towards the question, worrying she won’t like motherhood but will regret not having kids. Here’s her question:

My question is, how did you (and readers) decide you wanted kids at all? I’ll be 32 soon and am still on the fence. DH would regret never having a kid, but I would be okay either way. I lean toward no kids, and worry 1) I would regret childlessness when it was too late but 2) wouldn’t like motherhood. I like my life now and don’t feel “incomplete” but am confused by this ambivalence.

 

This should be an interesting discussion, and I’m going to leave it mostly open to the readers. We just had a similar discussion about how MANY kids to have (over at CorporetteMoms, our blog for working moms), and as I noted there, I had always wanted kids as one of my Big Life Goals, so I didn’t think too much about the decision to actually become pregnant. I will say, though, that it’s a HUGE life change that no one or thing can really prepare you for, and whether you want to become a mother or not, you should definitely be aware of that.

So let’s hear it, readers — for those of you who seriously weighed the question of whether or not to have kids, what did you decide — and why? How has the decision worked out for you thus far? Does anyone want to speak to regretting choosing to become a mother (or how you did it, or when, or why)? 

Psst: We’ve talked about how to plan your career for babies, and shared tips on preparing for pregnancy (what to know before you start trying to conceive). There’s also been at least one threadjack about how motherhood jives with being an introvert, as well as others that I’ll try to add here.

Picture via Stencil.

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2019 Update: This article was originally published on Nov. 25, 2013. If you originally commented, please copy your original comment and paste it and an update on our new post pondering five-year career goals and generally updating this older post.

Where do you think you’ll be in five years? TEN years? How do you think gender issues will affect your journey?

The NYT recently looked up some of the women profiled in a 2001 article, “Great Expectations” — in the original article, it interviewed new female associates at BigLaw firm Debevoise & Plimpton and asked,

Do the new female associates expect to see themselves making partner in greater numbers than their predecessors? Here, 17 of them scroll forward on their Palm Pilots and try to predict, while 4 veterans look back on what it took and speculate about the former colleagues who followed a different path.

The more recent article/documentary, “Great Expectations for Female Lawyers,” looked up several of the women profiled and found that many had not accomplished their original goals, many pondering whether the gender gap had an impact on them.

So I’m going to do something fairly ambitious today: I’m going to ask you guys to scroll forward in YOUR Palm Pilots (tee hee) and tell me: where do you want/think you’ll be in five years — and in ten years? What do you think the major challenges are that you’ll encounter? How much do you think gender issues will play into your success or failure?

I’d love to ask that everyone comment with an email address in the address field — I’ll keep your emails private but I’d love to be able to come back to this post in five years (or ten years, God willing) and email a few of you to see where you are, how it shook out. (This is the ambitious part!) (Of course all email addresses will be held in confidence, in keeping with The Corporette® Privacy Policy.)

For my $.02:  I’m so far off the path right now that this doesn’t seem even fair to myself for me to say. In five years, I hope I’ll still be running this site as my profession, of course; if not I have confidence that one of my many Plan Bs will work out. I’m not sure it’s fair to call them “gender issues,” but I suppose that’s what they are — I struggle daily with life/work balance, needing to devote more time to my business, wanting to devote more time (and quality, high energy time at that) to my family — and I struggle with finding time to be the “cruise director” to our lives (e.g., planning educational, age-appropriate weekend outings and vacations, managing our financial investments as well as clothing/food purchases, making family photo albums, etc, etc). I outsource/assign what I can to my husband, VA, or my mother (my Christmas list this year is a series of thinly veiled research projects!) but I think this “Cruise Director” Syndrome is a uniquely female goal — the goal to manage everything for your family on TOP of killing it in business.

Readers, let’s hear from you: where do you think you’ll be in five years? In ten years? What gender issues do you struggle with now (impeding your progress); which do you think will have a greater impact in your years to come? Those of you in (or about to be in BigLaw) — where do you think you’ll be in five years? For those of you who are or want to become mothers, how do you think that will change things? What will the impact be of sponsors, mentors, and other forms of support from your jobs (either male or female) — essential or nice to have? Is there a single thing that will help you reach your goals, and if so what is it?

(Pictured above: Original Palm Pilot, originally uploaded to Flickr by swanksalot. MY first Palm Pilot was one of the clear ones (if memory serves, I think that was my first), and it was awesome.)

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Readers, what are your best tips on how to negotiate future maternity leave benefits, such as before you get pregnant or even in the job interview? SHOULD you? I’ve gotten a number of questions about this recently, and I thought it might be an interesting topic. We’ve talked about how to announce your pregnancy at work, how to survive your first trimester, and how to leave an “out of the office” message for maternity leave — but not this. (Pictured.)

{related: tips for designing your maternity leave}

I have a few thoughts on this:

a) I really wish this is something that ALL women asked about. Heck, all PEOPLE asked about. Not only is it incredibly important for the family dynamic, but for the workplace dynamic too. If you don’t plan to get pregnant but work in a small office with lots of younger women — know that everyone else’s maternity leave may affect your work burden as well. If you DO plan to get pregnant, you should know your rights — particularly if you should be so lucky to weight multiple job offers. Of course: plans change. And, of course: no one wants to bring it up in a job interview.

b) The proper way to do it, I suppose, is to inquire about health benefits. When do they kick in? What is considered a preexisting condition? Do you have any disability coverage? (You may want to consider getting some yourself, before you get pregnant, in case bed rest is required or something during the pregnancy itself.) And in the midst of all that, ask about maternity leave benefits.

c) Know your rights before you go in. As Parents.com notes, “The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 grants all parents the same 12 weeks (it’s all considered family leave for fathers and adoptive parents). You can begin the 12 weeks before you give birth, but then you’ll have less time afterward.” The FMLA only applies to companies with at least 50 employees within a 75-mile radius. (So: consider asking how many employees work at the company during the initial interview stage.)

d) If you negotiate at all, try to negotiate for extra paid vacation time (perhaps that rolls over every year), as suggested in this WSJ article.

Readers — have you negotiated maternity leave (either for future maternity leave benefits, or right before you went on leave)? For those of you in smaller offices (particularly those outside the FMLA guidelines), what does maternity leave look like for you and/or your coworkers?

Pictured above, 5 great books for working mothers, L-R: one / two / three / four / five 

Updated images via Deposit Photos / Seetwo. FB images via Stencil (woman holds image of ultrasound against a pink blanket).

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Pregnancy worries can run the gamut from childbirth to health issues to being able to conceive in the first place. Add in concerns about how your job will be affected by your pregnancy (to say nothing of parenthood), and you’re dealing with a TON of worry. But is it as bad as future moms might think — and is there any point to worrying about it before it happens (or is that similar to Sheryl Sandberg’s thoughts on “leaving before you leave“)?

We’ve talked about many aspects of being pregnant — negotiating future maternity leave, handling frequent doctors’ appointments, working through first trimester exhaustion, and how to announce your pregnancy at work — but we haven’t touched too much on the worries that can loom large when you’re thinking about getting pregnant.

Reader B’s pregnancy worries involve handling her future pregnancy at work, as well as postpartum body changes:

I have a question that I have been looking everywhere to find answers to but have been unsuccessful, probably because the subject matter is TMI for most people and also very personal. I do not have kids yet but my husband and I plan to try in the next 3 years or so. Honestly, there is only one thing holding me back right now and that is my job. I absolutely love my job and plan to return after having a baby (I realize I could change my mind after having a baby), but the problem is that right now I share an office, with a male colleague. (I also realize that my office situation could change in 3 years, but I see no evidence of that happening.) My concern is with figuring out how to deal with bodily changes both while pregnant and after the baby comes and I return to work. I know that women deal with frequent bathroom trips, nausea, bladder accidents, milk leakage. How do I handle that while I office with a male coworker?

Hmmmn. I’ll agree that there are definitely body-related changes both during pregnancy and postpartum — but I worry that Reader B may be putting the cart before the horse here (and, you know, packing the cart with a lot of unnecessary anxiety!). A few thoughts:

a) A lot can happen in three years! If you plan to start trying in three years, recognize that a lot can happen in that time — your officemate could change companies (or, who knows, become a parent himself), your office could move locations, you could get a new job, you could get promoted within the company so you get a new, single office, etc., etc.

b) Not every pregnant/postpartum woman suffers nausea, frequent bathroom trips, milk leakage, incontinence, and more. For those who do, I’d guess that the worst of it is in the first three months postpartum — when you hopefully will be on maternity leave anyway. By the time you get back you’ll hopefully have figured it out. (If there’s one thing that parenthood in general teaches you, it’s that it’s all figure-out-able — even if you know nothing about a certain topic at the get-go.) Take milk leakage, for example. Over at CorporetteMoms, we often recommend printed tops and dresses because, as new moms learn, they hide stains better, whether from milk, spit up, snot, sticky fingers, or more.

By the time you’re back at work your milk supply will be much more predictable than it is during the first few weeks, and you’ll be pumping on a pretty strict schedule, so random leakage shouldn’t be too big of a problem. You’ll probably also be emptying both sides at once, so you won’t have to worry too much about leaks during the pumping. Sure, some moms see a picture of a baby or something cute and involuntarily respond with some milk let-down (it’s a little similar to your eyes tearing up) — if you happen to one of these moms, you can just invest in nursing pads to wear in your bra to stop leaks.

c) Even if you do find yourself dealing with uncontrollable milk leaks or incontinence or even just gas (um, not to scare you, but here’s a list of 20 things no one tells you about having a baby from Pregnant Chicken), here’s the thing: everyone will deal with it. 

Maybe your coworker will laugh it off — maybe he’ll go work in a conference room instead. (And maybe the pumping need alone will lead your boss to give you your own office, if you’re lucky.) It’ll be fine. If anyone is a jerk about it (or your workplace is collectively jerky about it, like, GAH, this recent NYT opinion piece), that’s a problem bigger than your getting pregnant, and one that may rise to a discrimination/harassment level if your company doesn’t make changes. (Here’s our last discussion on dealing with sexist pig coworkers.)

I definitely get being anxious about kids when you’re on the cusp of becoming a mom. (I won’t go into my own story here, but… yeah, I really get it.)

But don’t borrow worry. To every extent you can, enjoy the last few sane years of your life (for a while at least) without worrying about something far off in the distance that you can’t control. Go forward. Live your life. Get pregnant when you want to, and if, afterwards, you involuntarily pee a little or leak milk, everyone will deal — particularly your male coworker. (If he even notices.)

Ladies, what are your thoughts for Reader B? Are you similarly anxious about trying to conceive or getting pregnant, when you’re not even there yet? How do you deal with those worries? 

Further reading:

• Top 14 Pregnancy Fears (and Why You Shouldn’t Worry) [Parents]
• Feeling anxious about your pregnancy? Learn more about the top pregnancy worries [Pregnancy Magazine]
• Overcoming Your Pregnancy Body-Image Fears [Parents]
• 20 Reasons Why I Loved Being Pregnant [Parents]
• 29 Unexpectedly Awesome Things About Being Pregnant [BuzzFeed]

Pictured at top.

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