Did you miss work in order to go with your wife/partner to the Ob/Gyn? Was your boss cool with that? Was there a specific policy at your place or work regarding this? Was there any technique that worked well when it came to ditching work to support your pregnant wife?

No probs on my end. Supervisor has 3 kids, so he understood perfectly. It also helps to have a job that allows for flexibility. (Printing Design/Prepress - give the pressmen work, and I'm usually good to go.)

I didn't have any problems either. My wife and I work at the same company so I just drove anyway. There are a lot of expanding families here so it's just part of the regular day for most managers. Because of the business we charge specific accounts for the work you do and we have a Sick Leave number that the company uses for sick days as well as appointments.<br><br>I did try to schedule appointments for mid afternoon Friday to get an early start on the weekend though.

I bid for my schedules around the appointments. They seem to be set up at least a two months ahead of time, so it gives me plenty of time to plan my month. Unfortunately, this usually results in me working on the weekends. But for those of you who work banker's hours, perhaps putting in a little extra time when you'd normally be off (after regular hours, or on the weekend) would assuage the boss' reservations a bit?

Walk into the boss's office wearing a surgical mask, lean across his desk, and say the wife's got a condition and that you're pretty sure it isn't contagious, but you both need to go to the doc just to make sure. Then use a sani-wipe where you put your hands on his desk.<br><br>This normally buys you as much time as you need, no questions asked.

Izzy is on the right track!<br><br>My boss is fairly stern about scheduling, until it came to my expanding family. Since we had issues with fertility I also needed to come in late on some mornings before the pregnancy, so we sat and talked through things very frankly at that point about my expectations and hers.<br><br>The reality is that I've missed much more work since my daughter was born than for doc visits prior. Tell them to think of it as practice. :o)

I went to all of them except for the first ~2. No problems with the boss here, but I use the term prenatal appointment.

I used a few half days for appointments when she had appointments. I had to use family leave for the appointments and I only have about 3 days. I left myself with 1 day left by the time she was giving birth. However I am a teacher and she gave birth on the kids last day before summer so it worked out all right. The only time I really got out of work for another reason was during our first appointment. Being a teacher I can only take half days because they have to hire a sub. So on the first appointment I told them that I had an appointment and I could only get it around the noon hour and out of town. So that way I would need to go early for the day and then get back after the half day. Plus we didn't want people to know at that point since it was so early. I missed about 3 or 4 appointments and considering she had about 12-15 appointments I figured that was pretty good. She tried to schedule late, but when she couldn't she went on her own. I made sure that I went to the ones though that had to do with the ultrasound and the first heartbeat so that was still great.

Well, since I'm the boss, I didn't have any problems <br><br>I was pretty good about going to all of the early appointments (certainly the ultrasounds are a must). Later on in the pregnancy, I started to slip a little bit. And that is exactly when it caught up with me...<br><br>We were very close to the due date, and my wife went in to see to doc in order to see how everything is going. It didn't sound like a big deal, and I don't think my wife and I even discussed me taking off work to go to that one.<br><br>So, I'm sitting in my office, doing work, and my wife calls. I figured she was going to say: hey honey, everything's fine, see you tonight. Instead, she said: hey honey, I'm at the hospital, they're going to induce immediately. Try to get here soon.<br><br>So...my suggestion is: Don't to blow off those late-in-the-pregnancy appointments!!

I definitely went to fewer appointments on the third than I did on the first. But by the third, my wife was so confident and comfortable with the doctors and midwives, than I served less of a function at the checkup appointments. My work sitch was never really complicated. Even when I worked at the school, I didn't really have a direct supervisor, so I was super flexible.<br><br>Bosses getting pretty good points across the board here. But some notion that female bosses or men with kids are easier to work with on this issue?