Teacher pregnant working with challenging children stress

[Unknown12345678910u]

I am 19 weeks pregnant and work in a challenging school with a high percentage of children with SEN. Being the start of the school year, children are screaming and crying due to being dysregulated. Some of them can get agressive too.
I am experiencing high levels of stress at work and I'm absolutely drained even though it's been 2 weeks.
I am also worried that this might impact my baby's development with me being stressed, raising my voice constantly, being irritated at work with all the screaming, crying etc... I was wondering if anyone had the same experience? How did you cope? How's your child?

Have you had a risk assessment done? Ask for it to be updated as it’s the start of a new school year and you have new children compared with when the original one was done.

I have yes but it is expected to work with these children in my school.
The support staff is fantastic but I still have to manage the whole class as well as these challenging children etc... I am mentally and physically exhausted.

Not sure you can go off work because children cry.. but if you can afford it start mat leave

You obviously don't know what teaching is about. I am talking about the heavy and emotional workload, the long hours and significant stress that comes from this demanding job. Not about the 'crying' as you say.

Then give it up? Go off sick and then when you’re eligible for mat leave go on that. You obviously want that to be your option so do that. Weirdly enough my job is very stressful and busy. It’s not just teachers who have hard jobs…

Talking about support 😂
thanks a lot! You have been very helpful.

That sounds hard. The constantly fight or flight mode of monitoring the emotional temperature of the classroom to see if someone is going to kick off.

That state of being on guard physically is hard.

To counter any stress on baby you want to look at other times of day. Play fave music/sing in car. Bath/tv show in eve. Switch off at weekends. Those are the times you have control over.

I get it OP. I am so glad I had my DC before becoming a teacher, I don’t know how I would have got through pregnancy otherwise. I think this is where the NEU really come into their own. Talk to your rep and get advice. You absolutely need some reasonable adjustments.

Thank you for your advice.
I'm going to write an email and ask for some reasonable adjustments.

Can you start your mat leave early? Or as PP suggested, go on sick leave? It sounds like your job has changed and become much more stressful with this new class, so you can explain that to your employer when requesting early mat leave etc.