By Dr Tristram Finn and Dr Livia Macreadie
If you follow me on Instagram you may have noticed that my wife is pregnant with our second child. We are expecting another baby boy this coming December and are both excited and terrified of the coming challenge. As a husband it’s amazing to watch the process she is going through to grow another little human, but as a man, it’s really impossible to understand what she goes through each day at work. So I thought I would ask her to answer the question herself in case anybody else who is working with a pregnant colleague had any wonders. Below is her answer.
Being pregnant in our industry is definitely a challenge. I work with an amazing team of supportive vets and nurses but each day I face the challenges of a task I may not be able to do due to my pregnancy. Even the decision of when to tell people I was pregnant was taken away as the moment a married woman steps out of the x-ray room, it’s assumed that there is a reason for it. Additionally, this year Beransa and Solensia was released, which is recommended not to be given by pregnant women, and so a nurse had to be asked for help with this task. Again, queue the assumption that there would only be one reason I would ask.
I think what I appreciated in this situation were the colleagues who might assume, but didn’t ask. Some of my colleagues who were asked to take an xray or give a Beransa would simply help with the task and then return to their duties. Others would excitedly pull my aside wanting to know the reason I had asked for help. While I appreciated their congratulations, what I really wanted was for them to just help silently and not force me to reveal the information. Give your pregnant colleagues the right to share this when they are ready. Not to be forced because you have noticed a change of behaviour in the clinic. I’ll admit I did this to a colleague a few years ago because I didn’t know any better!
As the baby belly gets bigger, the simple tasks get more challenging. Getting up and down off the floor are still very possible but more difficult. And lifting larger dogs are definitely a no go.
How can you help?
Lift the dog onto the table for surgery if you are able, where possible help catheterise or perform blood draws on the table top too. And as the belly gets bigger and even more in the way, nurses who are booking consults can prioritise small cats and dogs for my consult rooms and keep the larger or aggressive animals for the more able Vets.
Otherwise, its just small common niceties. A particular nurse I work with is very excited about my incoming baby, and given she has gone through pregnancy herself, she knows how hard it can be to go through a busy day without time to eat or drink. Each time I bump into her between consults or surgery she reminds me to have a snack or will appear with a glass of water. My surgery nurse quietly makes sure I have a stool ready in the dental room so that my back can cope with a long and difficult extraction. Or my managing nurse will tell me about the sweets hidden in the lunch room!
I am fortunate to work with my husband on my main consulting day, and he is obviously more aware of how I may be coping on a given day. He often moves a large aggressive Rottweiler from my column to his, and replaces it with a small cat or dog. These small things make it so much easier to cope.
I suppose the answer is simple and to treat them as you normally would as they are still a capable Vet, but help with those manual tasks to make the day a little easier!
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