Taking day off work due to morning sickness

[luckilysane]

If you were pregnant and had been sick once in the morning, would you take the day off work?

It's not me but a colleague. She doesn't think it's a sickness bug, pretty sure it's morning sickness, but took the day off work yesterday because she was sick. It's her first pregnancy, first trimester.

YABU- she was correct to take the day off work.

YANBU- she should have come to work

Depends- if I was violently sick and felt rotten and went back to bed it’s likely, the first twelve weeks can be brutal. I was lucky to not suffer badly with morning sickness but my friend was terrible with it. Definitely not to be scoffed at.

I was quite happy to be sick at work 😁 - I suppose it depends how rotten she feels!. I would have gone to work (being "pretty sure" it's morning sickness & not a bug. We have a 48hr policy in place after the last bout of sickness for bugs etc)

I never vomited when pregnant but took 2 whole months off work with a sick note because I felt so ill with nausea. You don't know how bad she feels, one day off is nothing.

If I was sick once and then felt fine then yes it's daft to take a day off when you know the cause. But I know how bloody awful I've felt with nausea when pregnant and have actually had time off because of that rather than actually throwing up.

Pregnancy sickness (I refuse to call it morning sickness as it lasted all bloody day for me!) can make you feel absolutely wretched. It’s the woman’s call to make and her line manager’s job to deal with any issues arising from repeated absence. No-one else’s business.

With respect, what the fuck has it got to do with you??

If she felt too ill to be able to work, and needed to rest, then that’s her decision. There’s no one size fits all.

I have been able to continue going to work with morning sickness, but it is just in the morning (so far!). I don’t know how women cope being sick all day AND work full time. Being sick all morning alone is exhausting and emotionally draining in itself!

My colleagues have all been telling me to go home, but honestly, I’d be even iller if I was moping around at home all day.

It depends on how she feels.

I had hg. It started out where I'd be sick maybe once in the morning but I'd feel incredibly nauseous until after lunch and could have been sick at any moment. I felt I had to go into work anyway and found being sick there quite humiliating to be honest since we've only one small bathroom that opens straight off our communal office.

If she's feeling rotten then why shouldn't she go back to bed. My work were great and allowed me to work later hours and part of the day from home . Eventually even that was unsustainable.

The other possibility is that she had a medical appointment she didn't want to tell you about or didn't want to get into details about how she was feeling. Unless you're her direct line manager then it's really not any of your business.

I had sickness all the way to the end and felt like crap most of the time anyway. She obviously rang up thinking she couldn't work so I don't really see the problem.

It depends how bad it is and what the job is. I had nausea right through pregnancy and was vomiting occasionally, felt v rough, I didn't have time off sick but I have the kind of job where you can be a bit below par and still do something useful.
If I'd had worse vomiting and/or a more physical or stressful job I may well have taken time off.
I would have gone onto medication for it if I had been that bad, although that doesn't work for everyone either.
It's not really any of anyone else's business, presumably work has a sickness policy that will be followed just like any other time off sick

Depends how rough she feels really. I was lucky that my morning sickness was a bit of queasiness until I was sick and then I’d feel grand, but some people feel awful all day. But you should generally trust adults to make decisions about how poorly they are themselves.

How do you know what she’s off sick with? I hope she contacted you directly as her manager shouldn’t be telling colleagues what someone is off with.

It’s absolutely fine to be off with nausea and vomiting.

I remember a colleague who had to stop driving her car on her way to work and call her dad to come and rescue her. She had projectile vomited all over her windscreen 🤢😱

You don’t seem very caring? Or are you jealous? She could have her entire pregnancy off sick, I know plenty who have done that.

Maybe remind yourself it’s none of your business.

Agree with this but without the respect.

I had terrible nausea and sickness with both my children and massively regret not taking time off work. Looking back it really wasn’t worth soldiering on. I felt that because it was ‘just’ due to pregnancy it didn’t really count as being poorly. Which is fucked up. In any other situation, if someone had nausea and vomited, you would expect them to want to go home and be comfortable so they could hopefully feel better. Whenever I vomited when I was pregnant, it didn’t make me feel any relief. I felt just as nauseous afterwards. You don’t feel fine, throw up then feel fine again. Your post has made me really angry. It’s none of your business and you need to learn some empathy.

Are you asking because you do or don’t think she should have had time off? Have you been pregnant before? I suffered with pregnancy sickness in the evenings and took some days off work as I had been throwing up all night and was absolutely shattered. There’s not many illnesses where someone would feel exhausted and sick for weeks on end yet still be expected to perform normally at work, but pregnancy seems to be an exception!

She sent me a text this morning to say she'd been sick once but was taking the rest of the day off, then shared some photos of her going out to the local Christmas markets this afternoon.

I had to cover her work today- not possible just to leave it until she's next in, so had to work extra hours (unpaid) to do her tasks as well as mine. When people are away for illness, the managers normally share out tasks, but one manager has Covid and two others out of our team of six have flu/covid too.

I wouldn’t have worked for the first 5 months of my pregnancy. I was sick through the night, morning. It waned about 9-10am then started again in the early evening.

I presume you know for definite that she’s pregnant? Your update is a bit of a drip feed, she INBU taking time off for morning sickness but I would probably have exercised some discretion and not shared photos of me at a Christmas market, if I was taking a sick day from work for any reason (and even if I then felt well enough to go!)

I guess everyone is different. I remember thinking I didn't have any symptoms then puking up and pissing my pants at the same time, no fun. Some people have it, every day, all day so she'll probably need to suck it up if that ends up being the case and get used to it as I'd assume she can't take every day off.

I’ve had days off work where I’ve been sick once with morning sickness. I was sick first thing and felt nauseous all day but fortunately didn’t throw up again.

Ive also had days where I’ve been sick in the work toilets from morning sickness but kept working.

Every day is different when pregnant. And only your colleague knows if she’s well enough in herself to work. Tbh you seem really bitter to have put this up as a poll on the internet as to whether she should or shouldn’t take the day off.

Best response!

It’s not so much about if you’ve been sick (ie vomited) or not, esp not if only once. It’s about how you feel. So if you’re well enough in yourself to work, do, but if you feel very unwell then you can’t. Same as with anything.

Well I took 3 months off. Pregnancy nausea can make you feel like absolute shit, even if you aren't vomiting.

I had 8 weeks off in each pregnancy due to "morning sickness". Sometimes I felt up to having a walk to get some fresh air after mid bern sick.

I had sickness throughout both pregnancies. Somedays I could get into the office, sometimes I was sick on the way, sometimes sick throughout the day, sometimes I had to stay home. I was also exhausted so again sometimes made it in, but sometimes had to take time off 🤷‍♀️