Excuse needed for long sickness..

[Miolo]

Please don't judge, I already feel bad enough 😔. I need to be off from early June to early September.
Plausible reason suggestions needed please.
I feel guilty but it's circumstances out of my control that mean I need the time off. Don't want to reveal as might be outing.
Big public sector worker.. Months of being overworked and stressed. Curre doing the work of 3 people, not sustainable long term. I'm burning out.
Stress a plausible reason for 3 months off? Any other ideas? I do have a chronic physical health condition, would it be best to use that?

Read the OP's update.

Agree with other poster, surrogacy

Is it because you don’t qualify for maternity pay, so you want full sick pay instead?

This will never work. If this is even real.

Do you do something hazardous which means you can’t do it pregnant? If so, you just do your risk assessment and work has to find you other duties. I can’t understand why you’d do something like this (keeping it secret) which could jeopardise your own health or that of the baby. If it’s because of something like social services won’t allow you to keep a baby - they will find out somehow.

I genuinely can’t see a set of circumstances where this deception would be necessary or desirable. The public sector has some of the most generous benefits for pregnant women and new parents, so I am totally at a loss here.

Not if a relative is coming to do baby care.

@StopWindingBobStopWinding

The relative is who she is having the baby for 🤷🏼‍♀️

Well she said 'take up' the baby care, which could mean take over - take up where she leaves off. So maybe op's having the baby for this relative.

This is a dangerous and silly idea. You are not thinking straight.
Imagine the stress of covering this up at work. Some people WILL notice. You will have to lie to so many people.
You are depriving yourself of paid time off for antenatal care, maternity leave, maternity pay, protection from dismissal and essential risk assessments.
Just bite the bullet and tell them. They have no right to know any of the circumstances if it is surrogacy or whatever just tell your manger the bare minimum and tell them that you want it kept private so that you are appropriately protected

Are you planning on giving your baby to family? And you don't want anyone to know, which is why work can't find out?

You need support. With your pregnancy, birth and afterwards

Tell your manager. You don't need to announce your pregnancy to everyone at work but you cannot keep this a secret.

Are you actually sick, or are you planning to essentially take a sabbatical while pretending you are sick in order to get paid?

edited just seen the update. Madness

Genuinely can't think of any logical reason why you would entertain this idea and not tell your employer the truth?!!!

Not everyone needs to know. Could you not share with your line manager and ask that it is kept confidential? Make clear you don't want any questions about it and don't want it mentioned on your return to work. Are you having antenatal care?

Would it be less stressful to try and find another job where you can admit to being pregnant? Or just tell work and face the consequences (exposing an affair with a colleague or a work one night stand you want to hide a pregnancy from?)
It will be practically impossible to conceal a pregnancy and a baby, especially whilst faking another illness as well? Your head will be spinning.

This.

If you are not keeping the baby perhaps due to adoption/surrogacy you are still afforded legal protections as a pregnant woman. You may have a challenging pregnancy and need unexpected time off/labour early. The physical wellbeing of you and the baby and your mental health is vital.

There are real red flags about someone hiding a pregnancy. Are you in danger? Are you involved with social services that mean you are not only hiding this baby from your colleagues but wider society?

there are amazing service such as Women’s Aid and charities if you are not safe or need support

Far safer to declare your pregnancy as pp says. You'll be protected by law and then take mat leave. Why don't you want anyone to know, are you in danger.

Being under so much stress and overwork is harmful to you and your baby, youre protected if you have pregnancy related sickness and you work for a large organisation. Is the relative coming over pretending to be the babies mother. ⁸

I really hope you are ok and not in an abusive situation or in some form of danger.
Do you have a supportive midwife? I think you really need to disclose your pregnancy to somebody at work as they normally do risk assessments and as others state, you’ll then be able to access the correct maternity leave etc.

I can't understand any situation where it would be imperative to hide your pregnancy from work. You're legally protected, legally entitled to the leave you need, ability to go to appointments etc.

You can't be off for 3 months without a doctors note and no doctor is going to see a need to give you one when you're freshly postpartum and legally should be on maternity leave.

Ok that makes sense. However it's still not sensible. You would be better to resign in May and get a new job in September than to try to hide such an enormous secret from colleagues. Also don't count on being able to hide the pregnancy based on past experience. A first pregnancy can often be hidden especially if you are already plump and choose clothes carefully. Each subsequent pregnancy gets more and more difficult to hide as your abdominal muscles get strained more each time.

It is possible to do this legitimately with only your immediate line-manager and the person who does payroll knowing the truth, and everyone else can just be told you are having an operation. You could claim (to everyone other than the two people who know the truth) that it's an operation to remove a large cyst from your abdomen. Those who have to know the truth ought to be trustworthy to keep the secret. You will then legitimately recieve Maternity Pay (or Mat Allowance) and will not have been dushonest.

If those two can't know for some reason then talk to your Doctor about providing you with a fuzzily worded sick note. When I had a miscarriage the hospital said they would sign me off for as long as I needed to recover and woukd be happy to word it fuzzily enough that my employers wouldn't know what had happened however if you do this you will not have the legal protection that exists for pregnant women. It could go very wrong.

I still don't understand how you are going to get your dr to sign you off? So presumably you want sick pay rather than mat pay. For example as a teacher of over 4 Yr I would only get 4 weeks full pay on MAT leave but could be eligible for 14 weeks full pay on sick leave. I'm afraid if that's the case I still think you are unreasonable to do this.

I cannot fathom any other reason for not wanting to just take mat leave.

That hadn’t occurred to me before but of course your GP is going to know you are pregnant (unless you are planning to decline all antenatal care in which case words fail me). Even if you do they’d have to be a pretty ropey GP to fail to notice .

Your GP cannot lie on a fit note or collude with you covering up a pregnancy to your employer. They have a professional obligation not to write untrue info on official forms.

This is such a desperate crazy unworkable plan that I can only assume you are in some kind of awful situation. Lying to your work and pretending to be off sick is not sustainable and I think you must know that.

OP I hope you get the support you need IRL.

Ahh it’s about the money…. And the at the time due to come back it’ll be a whoops I was pg? But surely you’ll then have to get parental stuff time?

Well this has to be one of the most bonkers ideas I’ve seen on here, and that’s saying something.

I’ve known plenty of GP’s write “sickness” in place of “alcoholism”.

This has got to be fake because if you live in the UK there's just noway.

Majority of employers now you get 6 weeks at 90% of your pay. No employer would let you be off without a sicknote for anywhere near that long and no GP will write you a sicknote instead of maternity