6 weeks & night shifts (nurse)

[hereforthechai]

Hi, I’m sorry I’m advance for the long post!! Please bear with me! So I’m 6 + 6 and this is my first pregnancy so I’m feeling like a proper rookie haha. I’m a nurse who does a mixture of day & night shifts and I’m currently on a night shift and I’m just hating every minute. It’s not so much the sickness that’s getting me down but just how TIRED I am. I sleep all night, up by lunch time and then at 2pm I’m ready for a long nap again - so right now I feel sleep deprived.

I’m really struggling being at work right now. I’m just exhausted and don’t want to be here right now, all day I was curled up on the sofa and the thought of having to do a 12 hour shift overnight and only go to bed the next day at 8am had me in tears. I just feel so down, tired and deflated being here and I so desperately would do anything to just go home and sleep for half a day. I don’t want to look after anyone when I feel like this.

The problem is because I’m 6 weeks I haven’t told anybody at work that I’m pregnant and I really want it to stay that way, but I really don’t think I’m going to be able to come back for another night shift tomorrow. My dilemma is, on the weekend there are no management around & it’s only the nurse in charge that acts as the senior. So if I was to ring in and explain that I don’t feel fit to work due to pregnancy, I KNOW without a benefit of the doubt this is going to spread. This is what working in the NHS is like, one nurse in charge will pass it on to the next nurse in charge on shift so that they’re all up to date with who’s in/off but without sounding stupid, that’s how things spread through Chinese whispers and I know by the time I’m back it’ll be common knowledge. It’s just too early to make It known yet.

is there anyway I can ring in just generically sick & then on Monday when my actual manager is back in, ring her and discuss this is the true reasoning why I’m off? Would this go down as pregnancy sickness (as I know this doesn’t go against normal sickness) or can it not be changed afterwards? Sorry if none of this is making sense, I have nobody to ask in this field of work without telling them I’m expecting, so it’s a little hard for me to word on here.

thanks so much xx

Hi
Also NHS nurse
Keep it vague tomorrow with just saying you're sick.
Then speak to ur manager and disclose full info, ask for risk assessment and hopefully within that you can be taken off night rotation.
Hope the exhaustion eases for you x

Thank you so much for your reply. My only problem is I’m on monitoring for sickness due to surgery & a fractured foot (not had great luck this year!) so I’m just worried if I don’t disclose it as pregnancy they’ll put it down as generic sickness and won’t fix it. Joys of working in the NHS eh! Xx

I'm assuming it's ur manager who will log it on SSTS.
Your other episodes are hardly things that can be called a pattern, think they have been a bit mean monitoring u for that.
You and ur baby are the priority.
Any sick leave attributed to pregnancy does not count against your sick time.
I would say just to tell ur colleagues tomorrow "personal reasons" but there's no surer way to start a pregnancy "rumour" than to say that 🙈😂

Yeah they’re very OTT aren’t they. My manager was lovely about of tbf and said they were very random, genuine absences but still, would be nice to not be put on monitoring at all! I think I will do this thanks, might email my manager on the side & ask whether she can give me a call on Monday so I can speak to her about it. Haha yes that’s true! Nothing like that phrase to get people talking 😂 thanks lovely x

You do need to tell your line manager as soon as possible as you need your risk assessment done