Morning sickness - sick leave

[rachhendy]

I'm wondering what all of you lovely ladies did about your morning sickness...? I'm only 6+1 however unfortunately I am extremely boaky (not physically vomiting but wrenching severely for most of the day). My issue is I got sent home from work yesterday half way through the day and now feel I should ask my GP to sign me off for 2-6 weeks depending on how long it persists. I work in a neonatal interns I've care unit as a nurse (NHS) and bouts of sickness have come on while feeding babies or having serious discussions with parents about their baby's condition ect...not to mention I could be in an emergency situation quite easily at any given moment. I don't know whether to just call in sick on the days I'm worse or whether I'm better to just be off for a few weeks until things settle down...as I obviously can't be having sickness coming on in my place of work in front of parents 🤦🏻‍♀️ I don't want to but I don't think I have a choice...my manager made a cheeky comment to me stating it was 'very early to be that sick' yesterday before sending me home as if I was making it up 🙃 luckily a colleague heard me in the toilet so backed me up 🙄

What have you all done about sickness in a job where you work long hours and in an environment that it isn't safe for you to have sickness come on???

I am a lab user, and my pregnancy sickness meant I was fit to do the lab part of my work for the first few weeks. I was waiting for my risk assessment for lab work to be done so I wasn't in the lab during those weeks anyway.
I had anti emetics prescribed which meant I could continue working. I had some days off. Not enough days off in hindsight and I found that my sickness peaked after getting the train to work. I was fit to work when I left the house but by the time I reached the office I wasn't and then didn't want get back on the train home. Luckily there were low effort office tasks I could do.

My sickness returned at 25 weeks, by this pointed I was working from home due to covid so i didn't have to take as much time off as I had the flexibility to go for liedowns when I needed. I still had quite a few days off but if I was in the office/lab I would have been signed off for a few weeks at least.

@rachhendy

Hi thanks 👶🏻 my understanding was that pregnancy sickness is not counted as general sickness and therefore does not affect your current sickness record as it's protected. I also thought that pregnancy sickness would not affect your pay and your maternity pay as again, it's protected since it can't be helped? I work in an environment where it just is not possible to be at work if there's a chance I'll get sick because I may end up in a situation that's either dangerous for the patient for me to have to run to the nearest bin and it obviously also is not appropriate either considering most of our patients are very sick and their parents need to be able to trust the nurses looking after them and not have them running off sick 😬 I'll call my GP tomorrow for their advice and then also call my work as I'm due on a 12.5 hour nightshift tomorrow night and won't be able to do that since I've been super nauseous all day today 🤢🤦🏻‍♀️

Hi OP! Congrats on your pregnancy!

I know for a fact that absence due to pregnancy related illness definitely doesn't count towards your regular absences, it has to be managed / recorded separately and you can't be disciplined etc because of it. But as for sick pay, I was under the impression that employers have to follow the usual sickness policy - ie you get as much sick pay as any other employee would and it can certainly affect your maternity pay too if you are off long term. (Anyone please correct me if I'm wrong in this!!)

I'd definitely speak to your HR department to get clarity on everything, ACAS / Citizens Advice are also a good source of information regarding this. Good luck, I hope you feel better soon.

Please take the time off and look after yourself. I was quite sick but I powered through in a very high pressured job because I worried I would lose my job if I took time off. Few weeks later I lost my job anyway! I also became very unwell with antenatal depression and was all in all very stressed and sick.
Don't feel that you shouldn't get signed off- pregnancy is hard enough (although many people don't have bad sickness, and I think they can't understand how awful it can be when it's 24/7).
Put yourself and your health, mental and physical, first

I would contact the doctor to try anti-emetics this week. They might work well enough for you to return to work. As it is you sound far too sick to be at work and I don't know what gave your manager the idea that 6 weeks is too early - that is a very normal time to feel sick.

I would ask to be prescribed some medication. You sound like how I felt and honestly I’d have done anything rather than just put up with that for however long, you could have a couple months or more to go of feeling like that. Plus the weight loss was making me very anxious with my first, going on medication felt by far the healthiest option for me and baby. I had to try a few different ones though to get something that worked.

I explained to work I was suffering with sickness and that I may be a bit late sometimes and they were fine with that. I just went to work, puked on the way there (a few times in the street) and tried to carry on as best I could.