You just found out that you are pregnant? Congratulations! And welcome to a whole lot of planning, organizing and deciding. Among the things you have to decide is how much time off work you want to take. With my first daughter I went back to work after the end of maternity leave (8 weeks after…
Jealousy? Tantrums? A hurt newborn? Who doesn’t want to avoid these from their toddler as they are bringing a new baby home. When I was preparing for my first management role I also looked into change management and its theory again. There’s the common perception that humans don’t like change but that it can be…
Are you pregnant and still considering your birth plan? Do you want to have a natural birth but are not yet feeling 100% confident about it? Do you worry about what will happen during labour? Hypnobabies offers a complete birth education course to prepare you for it both mentally and physically so that you can…
Taxes – the one thing no one likes but we all have to do. If you’re like me, you have never spent too much attention to your taxes unless for the obligatory year end tax filing. As an employee of a Japanese company the attention became even less as they are handling all tax payments…
There are many different forms of financial support for the pregnancy, birth and baby journey. I have been seeing many different articles and posts talking about some or the other. However, I have not seen a complete list with all the benefits my family is receiving. My experience is based on having two babies as…
The term ‘applying’ for maternity leave might actually be a little bit confusing. You are legally entitled to maternity leave. Therefore, you might think of it as informing the different stakeholders of your situation. These notifications are important for your social security payments and the receipt of the financial support while on maternity leave. The…
In January 2019, I found out that I was pregnant. At that time, our wedding in Dakar was scheduled for December 2019. Invitations had already been sent. The baby would not even be 3 months at the time. I didn’t worry about the event of the wedding but was it possible to travel from Tokyo to…
Every mother wants to provide her baby with her breastmilk, also called the ‘human gold’, and not waste a single drop of it. Are you going back to work while you are still breast feeding and don’t want to switch to formula? Are you looking for the right product for your breastfeeding journey? Are you…
Within the same month of my promotion to management level I found out that I was pregnant. Thanks to examples of female managers and executives going on and returning from maternity leave within my organization just months before I hardly worried. I jumped right to “how to make this work” and how to create a…
Both of my daughters were born in Japan. Working in HR you would think I knew the ins and outs of the process on going on maternity leave. But both times, I struggled with the application and filing process – from finding the right forms to submission deadlines to approval stamps. And the filing for…