Pregnancy and shielding / social distancing

[Cocktails4One]

Hello - hope someone can help me with this as I'm guidance advice online quote vague (might just be me). I'm 6 weeks pregnant and have family members tell me I have to shield from now until the end of my pregnancy. Meaning not going to shops or public places and continuing to work from home. Is this true? Obviously I am overjoyed to be expecting and will do what I can to keep my baby safe but I do feel quite sad at the prospect of being stuck at home for the next 7 months and then starting mat leave! x

In all honesty @Hanrora06, it’s a mess. I’ve spoken to the school I work at and ultimately it’s my decision, unless guidance changes. I will need to sign three risk assessments though: the school one, a pregnancy one and then a ‘vulnerable category one’. The difficult situation in schools is that the ability to maintain social distancing is different in primary and secondary settings. So there isn’t a one size fits all model.
I want to go back to hand over my gcse classes before my maternity leave starts at the end of October. RCOG guidance does tend to update a little bit after the new government advice is updated. So if you spot anything else please let me know.

@danielasummer, as a middle leader, I’ve had a copy of our school draft risk assessment already and we have a specific box for partners living with vulnerable people. So you’ll need to ask to see that. They have to consider it in their guidance risk assessment.

@Rainbowafterthestorm that's really interesting, thank you for that. I am starting work in September in a new school (yes, not great timing pregnancy wise but that's a whole other story lol) and it's an SEN school. So the context there is totally different as well. I'm not 28 weeks until the end of September, so I'm just going to see what risk assessment comes around, and hopefully be prepared with as much knowledge as I can find. I'd rather stay in school and somehow work maybe 1-1 or in a really small bubble than leave altogether. It'll just depend on what's possible. As the children are also clinically vulnerable (or even extremely) in a lot of cases I think that will change things no doubt.

I will definitely try and post anything else I can find! It is really useful to find people in a similar situation as it's just such a minefield picking through guidance and figuring out what works and what doesn't. Plus the fact a lot of organisations are sort of passing guidance back and forth from each other, or just seeing what other people say before they decide what to do. Like a massive game of chicken. I was on supply at the start, and waiting for the different companies to work through the furlough guidance and figure it out was painful. I get it, it's new to everyone, but yeah it's not great.

Although shielding has been paused people in the shielding group have still been advised by the government to take extra precautions. Shielding is for people who are more at risk of catching and/or becoming very ill from
Covid 19 and the aim of it is to stop the NHS becoming overwhelmed not to protect those individuals. In some area of the U.K. it is more risky for people who are shielding to go out and about now then it was at the beginning of lockdown.

Commenting to follow. Still trying to pin point what it actually means we should do in a public facing role apart from the usual distance and wash hands.

My store has customers that do not give a crap about distance. Majority will wear a mask but staff won't try to enforce it even though we've bought masks to give to customers just whilst in the shop. There's no room for staff to 1m distance nevermind 2m and they've give up with masks too.

At the minute I've been plonked 2 floors up and away from everyone doing online business which i can't thank them enough for but not had a risk assessment for anything yet and this is my 3rd week back - I'm 27 weeks this week. It took a couple of days before they asked me to come down and cover dinners or run a day while the boss was off. Can feel the anxiety rising just at the thought of the conversation when I say no to doing stuff 😟

Secondary school teacher here. Will be third trimester at Christmas- so my head doesn't know I'm pregnant yet. Really anxious about what's going to happen... at the moment I'm facing standing in a non ventilated with up to 150 unmasked teenagers a day breathing in my direction...

Thank you all for the helpful responses. I'm going to venture out with mask on this weekend as going stir crazy at home!

@bumblingalonghappily - hope you're ok. I can imagine th anxiety but as soon as u tell work you will feel a whole lot better. X