To think that women who treat their own pregnancy as some kind of 'illness' and 'debilitating' within the work environment are a bloody PITA

[tiredemma]

Sorry- I know that I am going to get flamed for this, and will have people saying "well how do you know that they dont have an illness"....

Im beyond bored and frustrated with working with workshy oiks (who were workshy prior to conception btw) treating their own pregnancy as some kind of debilitating disease, one which renders them incapable of arriving for work on time, allows them to skulk off early at the end of a shift and even have the audacity to sit next to a ringing telephone without having the ability to answer the bloody thing in case they "cant direct it to the relevant person correctly"

I have had two children, I have worked FT through both pregnancies, I dont recall it being a reason to turn into a bone-idle miserable waste of space.

ARGH!

Fair enough OP, we all make those sweeping generalisations when we're pissed off.

YABVVU

I nearly threw up over a newborns head whilst the body was still in utero

I went off sick the same shift.

Not fair to the women i care for or my colleagues if i can't do my job properly.

i cant decided if yabu or not,

i personally cant stand whingy pregnant women, fair enough if you have some real problems but, really, why does the world need to know, pregnancy is a CHOICE not an illness.

SIL was a mere 8wks pregnant when her 2yo was shoved into nursery and taken and picked up by her mum as she needed a break, her mum then feeds him and settles him for a nap when he finishes nursery, shes now 20 odd weeks and her constant whinging and saying her poor ds makes so much noise the baby jumps, drove me mad and ive withdrawn from her, she isnt suffering from sickness and other unpleasant pregnancy side effects she is just a spoiled self obsessed cow, and sadly there are many women like this who make life for women who truly suffer in pregnancy a lot harder, and less supported.

YANBU to be irritated by this woman in this situation

What Professor Layton said. Very well said Prof. No two pregnancies are alike. I was sent home by occupational health at 6 months pg. I had horrible SPD and days of such exhaustion I couldn't move. I ended up having an eleven pound baby. No wonder I was tired. My boss said it wasn't good enough and if we all had a day off when we were tired there would be nobody in (she was a nurse, this was the NHS).

I do agree that some people who are already workshy can use pregnancy as an excuse to do less, but based on my own experience, I am often inclined to give them the beneift of the doubt.

I wonder where I would have fit in?? My boss seemed to think I was a shirker where as I thought I was a worker.

My job involves a lot of walking, lone working and pedominantly being away from "Facilities". I was made to feel that not completing any of my normal tasks was a failure. I carried on doing as much as I could (more than I knew was good for me) for 5-6 months untill as part of a risk assesment (That I had to request) I requested to see the Occupational health team. They immediately told me and my boss that I was not to carry on with these duties and further that my working hours should be reduced.

I refused to reduce my hours as I thought there was no need. However I went out of my way to find office based duties that I could do and made myself as useful as I could with no direction at all. However I was faced with the attitude that I was trying to get out of doing the job I was employed to do. (I had 1 day off sick in my entire pregnancy and that was following an evening spent in the hospital as I was displaying some signs of pre-eclampsia - I had also waited until I finished work to seek medical advice in the first place)

So cast your votes please- Worker or shirker?????

I got what the OP meant. There are people who do everything possible to dodge out of work at the best of times, who DO use pregnancy as an excuse to take that to another level, and then again, will use the fact they have a kid to do the same as well. They're the sort who started with the 24 hour bugs when they had hangovers as teenagers and have kept it up with different excuses all the way through. They're also the sort who give people with genuine problems a bad name by association.

It wasn't meant to be some kind of pregnancy ailments top trumps - just a legitimate vent that the resident office workshy now has another thing they're using to avoid pulling their weight is the way that I read it (sounds like they're the sort who'd use the fact there was a "y" in the day for an excuse if they could.

Some people take the pee for whatever reason - rounding on anyone who raises an eyebrow at someone they KNOW has a history of taking the mickey because you can't pick on a pregnant woman of any description just makes their position stronger and the resentment even worse.

I'm incidentally getting mightily fooked off with people trying to treat me like I'm made of glass - I'm just up the sodding duff, I'm not going to spontaneously combust if I stand up for more than 10 seconds!

"I am whinging and moaning about someone who is lazy at work (you have lazy people in your work surely?) - who now continues to be even more so lazy but uses her pregnancy as an excuse"

Yes but do you know she isn't ill as well as pregnant?

Being a lazy, irritating PITA does not enure an easy pregnancy. If it did, we'd probably all be trying it

blimey so this is what my work colleagues thought of me then when I was pg with dc 4. A lot of them were funny with me, well the younger bitches were

Well I did have some time off and went home early a few times plus had extra breaks and generally felt like SHIT because I had pre natal depression from 6 weeks then morning sickness that lasted all day, plus I couldn't walk far, swollen ankles, back ache. I really did suffer and I had to stand up for 5 hour shifts on tills and do delivery.

When I was allowed a chair I got slagged off behind my back by the same bitches who just didn't have a clue basically. Then the same people were horrible to me cos I started my maternity leave early at 29 weeks.

i think yabvu tbh. I know pregnancy isn't actually an illness but it does make you feel awful at times. I just wish pregnant women were treated like royalty and put on pedestals a lot more. After all we are carrying a new life....

We had two women in our office both pregnant at the same time last year (babies arrived Jan/ Feb)

One had an 'easy' pregnancy but was driven to and from work by her DH and did little at home as they lived with his parents and she went home and just put her feet up

The other one already had two children, a DP who couldn't drive and no family help. She was much more 'ill', off more and signed off with infections and such several times. She suffered a lot with unfavourable comparrisons from people who had no idea of the difference in circumstances

I'm now 28 weeks pg and I'm getting the same 'but X did it' type comments. Some people never learn :(

YABU.

Pregnancy isn't an illness but it can make you feel ill.

My boss used to think I was exagerrating about my all day morning sickness. I used to be about twenty minutes late each morning because I had to wait for it to settle down a bit before I could get on the bus. Sometimes I had to get off the bus to avoid vomiting on it.

I had a nice spell between 4 and 7 months where chronic heartburn was my only gripe. Then at 7 months, got SPD, which was delightful. My boss didn't believe me about that either. However, my community midwife is SiL's with a mutual colleague and she commented to that colleague that she'd seen a lady with such bad SPD that day (me) that she's had to sign her off on maternity leave a month early. Colleague worked out it was me and told the boss.That shut her up. :)

i agree, there are some people that sneeeze and take a week off, annoys me , and when these people are PG they cane it

its the difference between

pregnant woman a, feels sick but goes to work and toughs it out

pregnant woman b, feels sick and pulls a sickie

The behaviour in the person you describe is nothing to do with her pregnancy by the sounds of it. Sure it must be annoying, but just because you managed to work FT through both pregnancies doesn't mean everyone has the same experience as you.

I have been working on medically reduced hours at work and to be honest it has saved my sanity and my health. Not everyone has the same pregnancy experience. And believe me I have been feeling guilty enough at work thinking that people have been thinking about me the way you have about your colleague. Doesn't help when helpful colleagues tell me that their wife was playing badminton right up until the day they gave birth. Really reassuring to me given that I can barely make it from the car park to my desk without feeling like I am about to split in two.

Thankfully today was my last day.

I think it must be easy to have this attitude towards other less well pregnant women if your own pregnancy has been fairly easy.

I took my first ever day off work this week at 23 weeks pregnant and I felt terrible for doing so. However I know I have been so lucky not to have morning sickness or any extreme tiredness (yet!) and so I try not to judge other pregnant women who are clearly having a worse time.

Having said that - some people are skivers and they do use their pregnancy as an excuse to skive even more I am sure.

I agree with the poster who said pregnancy is irrelevant -
some people are stoic and power on as much as they can, and some people take any excuse they can to skive off.

Personally, for the first 20 weeks of pregnancy I had hyperemesis gravardium - clearly the OP and some other posters have been lucky enough not to suffer any really severe adverse pregnancy effects and so have been able to keep going.

I kept going to work for as long as I possibly, possibly could, including getting in the car and driving 60 miles to a court hearing (I am a barrister), when I hadn't been able to keep down even a glass of water for two days beforehand. After that I realised I had to take some time off. Porcamiseria - I can assure that it was not a case of me "failing to tough it out" = I physically couldn't keep going, and if you had been as ill as I was you wouldn't have been able to "tough it out" either.

Once I hit 20 weeks I was well enough to get back to work - so I did, and now regularly put in a full day in court on my feet at 33 weeks, which is requires me to be pretty tough, I can assure you.

Whilst no doubt some people do use their pregnancy as an excuse to skive - some of people simply can't carry on as usual for all or part of pregnancy, and them being skivers has nothing to do with it!

YABU, I was seriously ill with Symphisis pubis dysfunction from 9 weeks pregnant and was signed off work by the doctor until I gave birth. Now if anyone was to see me from the face up they would have thought I was skiving but in fact I couldn't move, needed a wheelchair etc. I tried to go back to work to help my students who had exams but Occupational Health told me not to come back to work. So you might have had easy pregnancies and been all Mother Theresa when you were pregnant but do not go slagging off other pregnant women, how do you know they are lazy though. Have you gone through their cases as Occupational Health would do and seen that they are skiving. How do you know that they have not been allowed to go home early. You are so judgey it's unbelievable

ps: that was going back to work unofficially while signed off as my students were begging me to help them

god dont take it personally emmakate! I was hospitalised in my first PG and I can assure you I did not tough it out! but if you have mild morning sickness you work IMO. I have got off numerous buses to puke, not funny

and of course there are some poor women that get very very sick, not fun

but there are many that use it as an excuse too, there are. fact

Someone who doesn't pull their weight isn't suddenly going to start when pregnant and someone who does isn't suddenly going to stop.

Just because you had a trouble free pregancy does not mean every woman will be the same.

What a gross generalisation of pregnancy you make in your argument.

I am extremely hardworking but did take time away from my desk throughout my pregnancy, to go and throw my guts up every now and then while I was pregnant with dd.

And when I left work a couple of weeks prior to the start of my maternity leave, you'll forgive me for thinking that my preeclampsia was more important at that moment than finishing that report.
And even more grateful that I did when dd turned up with barely no warning 3 weeks earlier than her due date. I very nearly gave birth in the car.

What's that saying about not judging people until you've walked a mile in their shoes. How I wish I could have lent you mine, for just a short time. No doubt you would have grinned through it all and turned up for work. You may even have had the baby in front of 100s of your co workers.

I worked through awful morning sickness and SPD during my second pregnancy. Even got a promotion 6 weeks post birth. Nobody gave me any medals for it, though. I put myself under huge amounts of stress and was wiped out for months after I had my baby.

I was a SAHM with my second pregnancy, but if I had been working I would have taken as much sick leave as possible and not given a fig. I had hideous hyperemesis and obstetric cholestasis and was exhausted.

I have come round to thinking that you have to look after number one when you're pregnant. Of course it's not an excuse to do nothing, but your health has to come before work. I am always really sensitive to pregnant colleagues and make sure they are able to take breaks when they need to and not take on too much. It is exhasting for some of us, especially the very early and late stages.

My son died last year when I was 22 weeks pregnant. I was working very hard and under massive pressure. This time round I am not taking any risks and have had some days off work when I felt I was doing too much and might endanger my unborn child. I am probably being over cautious but I'd rather that than lose another baby.

Is this ok with you OP or am I a shirker?