Baby due Dec, don't want to take time off. Help!

[NoraNora92]

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but here goes.

I'm quite early on in my pregnancy, I'm 5/6 weeks and baby is due in 3rd week of December. By then I'll be in my second year of my degree and on my Xmas break.

I'm determined not to intermit and to continue with my degree with my newborn. However i'm unsure as to how much time i'll have to spend with baby especially in the first 3 months as I plan to breastfeed. Can I study and give my baby the care he/she needs?

My partner has agreed to move closer to my uni so I can finish my degree and help look after the baby with to make things easier.

Any advice?

What degree are you doing and what are your contact hours? I didn't take time out after having ds1 in the Christmas break but I only had a few hours contact time a week so managed between taking him with me and dh having him. I'd feed before and after lectures which worked fine. Depending on how long you'd be I lectures for you may need to express and have your do cup or bottle feed baby, it is rather more hard work than just be but doable if you are determined. I didn't have a choice as a component of my degree was being taught out and the department closing so it was do or die really.

You need to make the right decision for you and your family. I know taking time out seems like the last thing you want to do but it isn't the end of the world. In a few years time nobody is going to care whether you graduated in 2017 or 2018. Life with a newborn is bloody difficult, you'll be sleep deprived and you will wonder where on earth all your time went, for small creatures who are supposed to just eat and sleep babies take up a lot of time! You may find it impacts a lot on your grades and ultimately your enter classification. However, you may also have a placid sort who lets you write assignments while sleeping on your knee. Just see how it goes, keep an open mind, but don't rule out dropping back a year.

IAmAPaleontologist

I study Psychology, but I'm not sure of my 2nd year contact hours. I am very determined, my I know my DP will help me with feeding.

I'm quite worried about the sleep deprivation as I don't really perform well when fatigued.

You get used to it!

You need to go talk to your department, ,they will know what the contact hours are like and will have had many a student in a similar situation and will be able to offer advice. Going part time may be an option, you could complete second year over 2 years so you keep your hand in, don't forget everything but don't have too big a workload and then go back to full time for year 3 for example. There will be a lot of options. Determined is good but nothing is worth running yourself into the ground for either, sometimes it is better to take a step back and the tackle it again when you are ready.

Being back in lectures 10 days post partum was NOT easy by any stretch of the imagination! I was hormonal, leaking everywhere and tbh I really didn't take much in! I'm a student again now and started my degree when dc3 had just turned 1 and that was tough in itself, I sometimes think I should have waited another year. But what's done is done.

However, it is doable if you want to stick with it and not take time out. What are your childcare plans or have you not thought that far ahead? You say your do will move closer but what is he doing? Who will have baby while you are in classes? You'll need to be sorted so you can bf baby just before a lecture then bf again after. If you are going to be longer than around an hour and a half then you'll need to be leaving expressed milk which means that expressing will have to be planned in to your schedule. You will need to be able to express while apart from baby too so say for example you have 4 hours of lectures, you've expressed the previous day to leave for baby to have during that time but during those 4 hours you body is going to say "I need to feed the baby" and your boobs are going to be really full and you will need to express for comfort and also for your milk production because full boobs feedback to the milk making system that it needs to slow down and make less milk. So you will need to discuss with uni where you can express and what facilities there are eg is there a staff fridge you can use to store your? There is a lot to think about.

No I haven't thought about childcare yet. My DP has agreed to look after baby whilst I'm in lectures, he wants to work part-time, and he has agreed to use some of his savings to help with rent etc.

I had had no clue my boobs would be full of milk and I'd want to empty them. I'm new to this all, this is my first...

None of us is born knowing all this, we all learn somehow. First lecture I went to after birth I got hot and took my jumper off. looked down and soggy top where I'd leaked through my breast pads and promptly put it back on again .

You've got plenty of time to decide what you want to do, you'll get there. Stick around, look at the pregnancy and breastfeeding pages and you'll start getting an idea what it is like and don't be afraid to ask questions and start threads of your own, you get some daft twunts making sarcastic comments but most people are helpful.

You may not leak at all. I breastfed two children and gave the unused box of breast pads away afterwards. Everyone is different.

I went back to uni when DS was 8 months. It's not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but it's do-able. Make sure you take time to think about your plans, intercalating is always an option.

Congratulations

True true. Friend of mine gave me her unused pads having not leaked at all even though she bf twins. Bitch .

Unusual though. But it still stands that if you are wanting to bf then you would need to express at the same intervals that the baby would feed else you'll be facing reduced milk production, discomfort and possibly blocked ducts and mastitis.

Hi!

Have you considered completing your first year, then transferring your credits to do the degree with the OU. They have a brilliant reputation and the deter is BPS ACCREDITED.

I'd rather not go the OU route, I've worked really hard to get into a good university I know I'd regret leaving.

I started uni at 28 weeks pregnant, baby was due at the beginning of December. I ended up having to be induced at 38 weeks. I went back to uni when baby was 9 days old, had a couple of weeks at uni and then time of for xmas. I then went back in January as usual.

I'd say it's doable, but it really depends on what happens with both your pregnancy and birth, and what you feel like afterwards. How I felt with a newborn was NOTHING as I'd imagined. I did go back to work part-time at 3 months, but looking back on it I have no bloody idea how, as I was so ill and so sleep-deprived for so long. Before I went back to work I also did freelance proofreading (newborn in one arm, sheaf of papers in the other) and didn't get complaints, so my brain must have been working at some level.

Do make plans and think about what you want, and all the rest of it, but be aware that all your plans may come to naught, as what you want (and are capable of) now may not be what you want (or are capable of) when your baby arrives. Everything might be as you planned, or (as I did) you might unexpectedly morph into quite a different person than you'd imagined you would be.

(And I leaked like a very leaky thing. When I wanted to treat myself at night, I'd swap the pads in my bra for opened-up nappies, just for the joy of not waking up in a soaked bed.)

...that's clean, unused nappies, in case there's any doubt! The newborn ones are just the right size for giant norks.

Take a break from the degree. I too had a baby in my second year of my degree and it was a mistake, a massive mistake. Studying with a newborn is bloody hard, you don't know how you will feel(I had pnd) and leaving a newborn to attend lecture is horrible.

I took a year out and it was so so much better. My son was older, we had a routine down and could happily be left with family while I did work. I just finished this year with a 1st, would not have happened if I stayed on the course when my son was a baby.

I know it can be doable with a new baby but it is hard, very hard and I do not regret taking a year out.

Sorry that should say it was a massive mistake to go back straight away after baby, not that my son was a mistake! Lol

Wow archery that is genius! Saving that idea for next time!