Pregnant French banking associate: "Stress gave me contractions"

How do you hold down a demanding job as a junior in financial services while also being pregnant? An associate in an "investment boutique" in Paris has posed this question on Instagram after being signed off sick with contractions. 

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The question was posted on the female-friendly M&A associate account run by anonymous European M&A banker who's almost certainly a vice president by now. 

The poster (also anonymous and not the account owner) says that she found out she was pregnant a year ago, just before her promotion to associate.  "First trimester was complicated because I kept it secret and had to manage experience tiredness and nausea," she says. Working from home was frowned upon.

In the second trimester, she says she broke the news of her pregnancy to her team. They still wouldn't let her work from home, but they did at least take some tasks off her hands and staffed her "mostly on pitches." Even this was too much though - she ended up having contractions and had to take time off sick. She's now in her third trimester and hasn't been back since.

So, is it even possible to do a demanding financial services job while you're pregnant? One female managing director at a boutique firm in London tells us that it is, but you need to watch how you play it. 

"It's best to start a family while you're still junior," she says. "- At this stage of your career, you're still "pluggable" and can be slotted into deals. People will be compassionate and understanding, and it's fine if you do one less project or work more flexibly at times." However, as you get more senior, she says it becomes harder to take time out. It also becomes harder to get pregnant in the first place. 

The MD also tells us that she still expects pregnant team members to get work done.  It's not about working hours, but deliverables. She says the worst thing you can do as a pregnant junior banker is to make a "drama" out of your condition. "Be happy and positive and assure everyone that you can cope. Don't use pregnancy as an excuse for not working, and when you've given birth don't use the baby as an excuse for stopping early." - This isn't to say that you can't stop early or have work boundaries. But if you keep mentioning the baby or child, "senior people will think it's not worth investing in you." 

Not everyone will agree with this advice. One junior woman working in hedge funds says none of this matters if you're a pregnant banker in France: "The labour laws are so strict that all you need to do is to go on sick leave and they won't be able to touch you," she advises.

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