In 2023, shortly after LP O’Brien announced she was pregnant, a client backed out of a contract. “They emailed me to say, ‘We just want to be mindful of your situation. So we’re going to go in another direction,’” says the entrepreneur and CEO of LP Drinks Co. They had signed an agreement for her to work at an upcoming festival following her first-place finish in Drink Masters, Netflix’s reality TV bartender competition. “It obviously was illegal, but, for my sanity, I needed to focus on what was in front of me. My priority at the time had to be taking care of myself and my soon-to-be-born child.”
While O’Brien’s circumstances were unique, this type of situation is not uncommon, drinks professionals say. Despite federal protections, the lived experiences of pregnant bartenders include everything from decreased hours to reneged partnerships to untenable physical expectations. Pregnant and postpartum employees describe changing jobs in order to secure healthcare, taking on side gigs during partially compensated parental leaves, and answering texts about shift schedules from hospital beds upon giving birth.
When some bartenders learn they’re pregnant, they know they have to find a new job immediately. That’s how Caer Maiko Ferguson felt. She figured a small, neighborhood spot with shorter shifts, devoted regulars, and a conscientious owner could provide more flexibility and support during her pregnancy and postpartum period than the high-end cocktail bar in downtown Austin, Texas, where she’d been knocking out 12- to 14-hour shifts. “It was an intentional choice,” she says. “A lot of planning had gone into finding a place where I could comfortably exist.”
That’s not to say bartending until her 38th week of pregnancy was easy. She continuously hired and retrained staff to cover her leave and had to adapt their and her own schedules as circumstances changed. Even among a supportive team, the physicalities of her pregnancy and postpartum period presented challenges. She remembers how the smell of mezcal exacerbated her first- and second-trimester nausea and pumping breast milk in a shared bathroom or her car. “You couldn’t always leave the floor to go to the bathroom to throw up,” she says. “You’d be talking to someone, and telling yourself, ‘Stay calm, you can’t be nauseous right now,’” she remembers. “Keeping that decorum is really hard.”
“I once had to go to the ER during a weekend night shift.” —Linda Nivar
Linda Nivar, a New York City bar manager and hospitality consultant, echoes these sentiments. “You hear about the nausea and the tiredness. But there are other symptoms, like sciatica and lightning crotch,” she says of the stabbing pelvic pains that typically occur during third trimesters, when fetuses are larger. “I once had to go to the ER during a weekend night shift.”
During her first pregnancy, Nivar was the only manager at a tropical Manhattan bar. She worked until the last possible day before delivering so she could afford to take a partially compensated parental leave. Out-of-pocket monthly insurance fees for her growing family were $900. So she started working remotely for the bar almost immediately after giving birth. “I had my daughter on a Thursday. And I put in the Baldor order that weekend,” she says, referring to the specialty food distributor that supplies many bars and restaurants. “The day I gave birth, I got a text message from one of my servers saying, ‘I don’t think I can make it to my shift.’” Nivar has since left her full-time manager position to serve as a consultant.
Amanda Victoria, founder and CEO of Siponey Spritz Co., also reimagined her role when she started her family. When a drinks company canceled her public-facing consultancy upon learning she was pregnant—“coincidentally, right around the time I started showing,” she says—she decided to become an entrepreneur. “My daughter is the best thing that ever happened to me and my career because she motivated me to create my own path and is my whole world,” Victoria says.
While it’s difficult to name an industry that seamlessly meets the needs of pregnant and postpartum employees, hospitality has particularly unique obstacles. By nature, wages for non-salaried workers are insecure, shifting from night to night and week to week. In bars and restaurants, healthcare benefits and paid leave are rare. Duties are physically demanding, requiring standing for hours and stacking or lifting heavy glasses and boxes. And, as anyone who’s ever worked service on a weekend can attest, bathroom breaks are often few and far between.
“I was really worried about what all these men would think if I came over to their table with a big belly and a bottle of wine.” —Victoria James
Guest-facing hospitality workers contend with an array of interpersonal nuances, too. Bars and restaurants are inherently social places where typical boundaries and inhibitions tend to dissipate. “People go to restaurants with that mindset,” says Victoria James, a partner at Gracious Hospitality Management in New York City. “They want you to be a part of the party.” Pregnancies can complicate already fraught social terrain. “When I was pregnant with my first, I was very self-conscious about it. I had never seen a pregnant sommelier,” James remembers. “I was really worried about what all these men would think if I came over to their table with a big belly and a bottle of wine.”
Taboos about visibly pregnant people working in spaces where alcohol is served persist. In 2023, a bar manager in Austin fired a pregnant bartender because he was “genuinely scared something bad” would happen to her, and her condition had become “a liability,” according to the suit she filed soon thereafter. “Culture is always top-down,” says Maiko Ferguson. “That’s one of the reasons why women owning bars is so important.”
Althea Codamon remembers receiving “judgmental looks” from some guests while she tended bar at New York City’s Union Square Cafe until the 38th week of her pregnancy. “Then they’d taste their drink and be like, ‘Okay, that’s the best Martini I ever had,’” she says. “Don’t judge a bartender by the belly.”
Advocates would argue that bars and restaurants could also adopt policies to support and retain their teams, particularly in an industry with such high turnover. According to one analysis, from January-April 2024, nearly 3 million people left their hospitality and leisure jobs, a figure 204 percent higher than the national quit rate. This is expensive for employers. Researchers suggest it costs companies anywhere from $4,700 to $5,864 per person to hire and retrain a new employee.
Like Maiko Ferguson, Codamon changed jobs because she thought Union Square Cafe would be a better place to work while pregnant—“until my stomach was knocking off speed pourers and the cash register would not open,” she says, laughing. The restaurant’s parent company offered health insurance and parental leave. And her managers asked if 12 weeks would be a long enough parental leave. The company repeatedly stressed that her position would be available whenever she returned and were flexible about rescheduling shifts. Her postpartum needs, like whether pumping in the locker room or bathroom would provide enough privacy, were also addressed. “They were very curious and accommodating,” she says. “They allowed me to balance being pregnant and being a mom, and my body changing while doing such a physically taxing job.”
While Union Square Cafe is part of a corporation with more resources than any mom-and-pop operation, aspects of Codamon’s experience could potentially scale for hospitality businesses of all sizes. “People are going to continue to get pregnant. You might as well find a way to make it work,” says O’Brien. Now expecting her second child, she uses her platform to advocate for pregnant and postpartum workers. “How do we navigate this in a way that we’re opening doors for other people?”
