Having a baby is a bit like joining a secret society: other women offer advice and support like never before.

In Boston I see a presentation about the success of the Pampers/UNICEF alliance - Pampers donates money for vaccines for newborns around the world when you buy a pack. The insight behind the campaign is that there is an unspoken connection between mothers. 

The insight clarified a thought that had been rumbling: I’ve become a member of a secret society.  Women offer advice, empathy and support when you are expecting a child as they never would normally.  A gulf is bridged by your pregnancy and their experience. Time and again in airports, offices and public places I am surprised when women confide their intimacies: pregnancy stories, parenting disasters and the occasional (sadly very occasional) orgasmic birth. A woman I work with, who I like very much but only know a little, tells me that she had had postnatal depression: ‘If, at any moment, you even start to think you may have it, you call me straight away.  I promise I’ll help you.’ American mothers are particularly supportive; the serious can-do demeanour many hold is dropped in talk of families. 

My PA shouts: ‘Portugal wants to know if you need anything special for your visit next week’. A loo every 45 minutes, food every two hours and a quiet hotel, please.  By the time I arrive at the office the women have already worked it out, and share their delight enthusiastically.  One confides she is a few weeks pregnant, information her boss shares with me many months later as breaking news.  I don’t have the heart to tell him it isn’t.

Over lunch the best management coach in the business, Pat Watson, demonstrates the breadth of her wisdom without any prompting.  'There will be times when you wake up at 3am absolutely certain that there is something very wrong with your baby.  You will be sure of it.  And you will be wrong.  The baby will be fine.'

While dropping off a form at the hospital first thing, I overhear a woman pleading for a new scan because she is sure that something is wrong with her baby. She can’t really explain why, but says it hasn’t been moving today. The receptionist is not taking her seriously and the woman is becoming upset. 

She’s too early in her pregnancy to have realised she is joining a club that will help her and keep her sane.  When she meets her NCT group, the unacknowledged meeting point of professional women who are pregnant, she will start to realise she is connected to something bigger. When she finds her Pat, the night frights will have met their match. 

Don't get sidelined in the planning of your own maternity leave. Make your preferences clear!

At some point, you need to talk to your boss about how you're going to manage your maternity leave. There is no ideal time for this conversation, and it may well happen unintentionally. But you can think ahead, and try to remember two or three points when the moment comes. Prepare to be influential!

What needs planning?
Ask to set another specific meeting time to discuss handover, your role in it, communication during your leave, any Keeping in Touch days [See Kitted out for maternity leave] and your plans for return (if you’re ready to discuss that). It’s surprising how often this conversation just doesn’t happen. Research shows the pregnant woman, despite being the expert on her own job role, is often side-lined in the planning of maternity cover (Millward, 2006).

Hearing people start to ask: ‘Have you had your ‘Pre-Maternity Leave Review?’ in global law and financial services firms has been one of my joys as a maternity coaching consultant - even if we did have to give it this compellingly formal-sounding name to make it happen! A forward-thinking HR/ Diversity team can put together managers’ checklists for this, and for a Post-Maternity Leave Review. It can also serve as a performance review check-in, which can otherwise become fuzzy following maternity leave. Where your organisation has no such formal check-in, can you take responsibility for raising some of these points with your manager?

Put yourself in their shoes
Whatever you ask, try to see how it looks/ sounds/ feels etc from where they are sitting. They may be avoiding the conversation not because they don’t value you, but because they feel embarrassed to ask, or because they fear discrimination claims if they start prying into your plans for return. What, do you think, is your manager’s top concern right now about your leave, and how can you help them manage that? How can you help your manager deal with the impact on – and questions from – the rest of the team? What’s the business benefit of a more planned approach to the handover and return?

Do it on your own terms
And what about your point of view? Once you’ve shaped responses to the concerns you think your manager has, get clear about what you need. What’s the bottom line for you in terms of communication during maternity leave (as little as possible, or lots? KIT days, or just a quick phone call?). Have you some hopes for how your return will be? (A phased return to flexible work in 12 months or just four months out and straight back in?) Plans may change, but if you want to have a talk like this, it will almost always be you who starts it.

There is a handy new set of general guides for new parents and employers on Returning to Work, sponsored by Working Families and NCT, written by Liz Morris.

Does having a baby make women better leaders? Or is it the greatest barrier to gender equality?

In a feminism class during my Politics degree, I remember our lecturer explaining once  that there are two feminist view of pregnancy: one is that it is the ability to give birth that is the source of all of women’s power. The other that it is our Achilles heel; the factor that means we will never achieve equality with men.

The first rings true: there is something startlingly empowering about being pregnant. You become slightly mystical and remote. Others treat you differently. In every country I visit pregnancy has a special status: like marriage, it is universally celebrated. And the cocoon I have with my baby gives me distance; more perspective perhaps. As long as the baby and I are OK, it doesn’t seem to matter very much what anyone else thinks or does. I find myself more decisive, more sure and certainly a more confident leader. I am far less intimated by the wisdom and experience of others. Carrying a child immediately denotes that you are an adult and should be taken seriously.

But I can’t help feeling that the other viewpoint is also valid.  In the workplace you are aware (and others allude to the fact) that you are a declining asset.  Some are unafraid to suggest you are a drain on the business; others are afraid to say so but fail to conceal that they think it. Your time is limited before your maternity leave. And no one is sure what will happen afterwards; will you be back, and when?  You could become irrelevant or, at least, less relevant than now.

Perhaps I should write to my lecturer and tell her that, in my experience to date, the feminists are all right.

Except the one who confidently predicted that in ten or fifteen years (i.e. now), everyone would have their babies in the equivalent of fish tanks to avoid the downsides of childbirth.  Not that this is an idea without merits.