Hi,
I'm an English Teacher in a Secondary school currently 34 weeks pregnant. I'm due to go on Maternity Leave from Monday, but have had a lot of time off sick during my pregnancy mainly due to low iron making me exhausted, sickness, persistant water infections, usually accompanied by yeast infections, a chest infection, migraines and general lack of ability to cope with the pressure of being a Teacher and the associated side-effects of feeling dreadfully run down all the time. Many women told me about the 'pregnancy glow' which lasted all of about 4 weeks until I was back to feeling awful again whilst struggling and buckling under the huge workload!
The school helped by giving me cover lessons here and there, but it was never enough to catch up on marking and I felt unable to be productive in the evenings, because I was so tired after a day at work. Anyway, I just feel ridiculously guilty about the time off I've had, I've always had a doctors note but I know that my absences have a had a huge impact on my department who have had to do extra work on my behalf, such as setting cover lessons. I did what I could from home, but if I'd have set my own cover, marked work and continued to write reports, there would have been no point in being off sick in the first place and the doctor ordered complete rest during these periods. I know that it has frayed good relationships I once had with people in my department.
Has anyone else has to juggle a high-pressure job whilst being pregnant and experienced anything similar? How did you deal with it? How did other colleagues react to you taking time off sick? I feel very much on my own with this at the moment so any responses would be helpful.
Get updates on how your baby develops, your body changes, and what you can expect during each week of your pregnancy by signing up to the Mumsnet Pregnancy Newsletters.
Pregnancy
Working and Pregnancy
Hasle157 · 25/06/2014 19:19
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
This reply has been deleted
Message withdrawn at poster's request.
Don’t want to miss threads like this?
Weekly
Sign up to our weekly round up and get all the best threads sent straight to your inbox!
Log in to update your newsletter preferences.
You've subscribed!
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.