Headmistress goes back to work 7 hours after giving birth!

[wastwinsetandpearls]

How and why would you?

Of course it must be easier when you have a plush office to sit in. Not sure I could teach bottom set year 9 while breastfeeding and changing nappies.

DON'T send her there, it used to have a very bad reputation, don't know if it still does.

what is the good message exactly?..I dont need to share my baby with the 'community' 7 hrs after giving birth.... sorry I think its weird..7hrs after birth I was with my DH looking lovingly into my DDs eyes and having the odd nap between not taking her into work????..goodluck to her looks like she needs to protect her territory

Appalling example to set.

The woman has an internal wound where the placenta came away from the uterus and that wound is currently bleeding.

What is she saying - career is more important that one's own health and being with a newborn?

I don't get it. Setting up those young girls for huge disappointment when 1 in 4 ends up with a CS and is still bedridden etc by 7 hours post partum.

bet if she worked for an innercity comp she wouldn't be rushing back

that would be impressive

She's hardly the typical working mother who has to account to her employer; she is the boss who can pick her hours. The work is meetings, phone calls and paperwork for which she sets presumably sets the timetable. For a teacher like me who works in many different classrooms and has classes of 30 to attend to it would be totally impractical, plus schools are fabulous places for spreading bugs and seasonal nasties.

Bu anyone reminded of the Brittas Empire and Carol the secretary with her baby tucked away in the drawer?

Message withdrawn

I dont think its as bad as it sounds (having read about it).

I wouldnt do it though. I was pretty together fairly quickly after having DC4 but in no way up to going out and about.

It seems she wanted to send the girls a positive example of breastfeeding and motherhood etc

I think its a pretty unrealistic example of anything.

Is she going to turn out a bunch of girls who feel total failures after having their first babies because all they feel up to is lying down? She says herself that they havent had much experience of babies and early motherhood (one of her reasons for going in) so will they think this is the norm and anything else is a bit wimpy?

Who knows.

5gomad I have no intention of sending her there in reality I just thought the family feel seemed nice.

Every month dp comes up with a different feepaying school we can send dd to. I smile sweetly and ignore him. I think he thought this time he could play the religion card and I would cave in.

Interesting it has a bad reputation though, what for?

If all she is doing is popping in with the baby I can see no harm.

There is one good message there, even tho I'm not sure she did the right thing (given the whole hotbed of germs thing). At least she's demonstrating a blurring of the line between work and childcare there - so long as no one's under any illusion that her work rate is like it would be if she had no baby there, it's a valid (if different) model of working.

She's headmistressing more in the way someone working in a cottage industry a couple of hundred years ago might have been back at a spinning wheel or loom within a few hours of giving birth, isn't she? After all if she lives on site the school is her home.

An awful lot more women would be able to keep better in touch with their careers and be better placed to start more work when their children are older if they could keep a toe in the water in the same way when they had children. It's too black and white at the moment - you're mostly either expected not to be at work at all or to behave exactly as if you have no children at all. Even if that soon after birth seems a bit soon still.

OK, it doesn't fit with our rigid post industrial revolution idea of 'jobs' that you go to leaving all family behind, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

that's illegal. Her employer should be prosecuted for allowing it. In the uk there is a 2 week compulsory maternity leave. No excpetions that I know of

A very good point upsidedown

Interested to see how she'll carry on from here -- I imagine a newborn is easier to "manage" at work than a growth-spurting four-month-old or a weaning baby!

A ridiculous piece of self promotion and journalism. As if this is reality for other mothers. A third baby, an uncomplicated birth and a job where she can bob in with newborn, check her mail and bob out again.

Yes Dorothea although I think she admits it may not always be that easy.

My dd was a doddle as a newborn, as a toddler it was a whole different story.