How To Survive Teaching while Pregnant Part I

The First Two Trimesters

I decided to write this based on my own experience working as a substitute teacher during trimesters I & II. One of the biggest things I wondered about in the early days of my pregnancy was how pregnancy would impact my teaching (and vice versa).

Keep in mind as you read this that I am NOT having a high-risk pregnancy, and didn't have tons of troublesome symptoms, so if your situation is quite different, this advice may not meet all of your needs. The intention is to give other teachers some idea what it was like for me to work during my pregnancy (your own situation may be very different).

The other thing to keep in mind, is that although I work regularly (usually 4-5 days a week), subbing is quite unlike being a classroom teacher in the sense that you don't have to plan lessons all the time (I do it occasionally for some jobs), you don't have to put in all the time after school, and you don't take work home (unless you're on a long-term assignment), so in some ways, it is vastly easier than regular teaching. On the other hand, you are in a new building with unfamiliar kids almost every day, so while you work fewer hours, you probably have more stress to deal with than the average non-first year teacher.

The most important thing at this time is to really look after yourself and don't let yourself get too tired. Teachers are notoriously bad at this, but this is not a time to push yourself to put in a lot of time and effort into anything extra if you're not feeling it. This is not a time in your life to volunteer for committees or take on new tasks. Pregnancy can be really exhausting, especially at first, and even doing the bare minimum may take all the energy you have to spare.

Telling your students that you're pregnant is pretty much up to your discretion. As a sub, I didn't bother telling anyone until it was visibly obvious--students or otherwise. If you are a classroom teacher, you will probably be able to get away with not mentioning it until you start showing, or are so plagued with symptoms of morning sickness that it's impossible to hide. However, you may be pleasantly surprised how your classes react once you share the news. Based on how nice kids usually are to me (when I tell them I'm sick or having a bad day), you may be pleased by how good your kids are about the whole thing. Even in middle school and high school, kids are usually pretty good about the whole thing. If you are a high school teacher, you may even find that your toughest students suddenly become weirdly protective and alarmingly helpful. Sometimes the worst students turn into angels once they know you're pregnant. It's weird, but it happens.

Teaching is a very tiring thing to do in normal times, much less when you're pregnant. This is a good time for switching the focus from you to your students. As I always say, make the kids do most of the work, and that includes learning. Group work, cooperative projects, and student-led lessons are easy ways to ensure that YOU aren't doing all the work. Design your lessons around making life easier on you physically. They do not always have to be top notch lessons but its better than driving yourself crazy and burning out. Come up with a way to have your students do some of the work of grading (rather than correcting papers yourself).

This is a good time in your life to start incorporating more hands-on activities and video clips or films into your lessons (anything that reduces the amount of time on your feet, basically). Use as many shortcuts as you can to get things done, and delegate tasks to students to keep you off your feet a bit. Another thing I would suggest is to get a TA or maybe even two if you teach at the secondary level and have that option. Students can also help you out by setting up equipment and carry around heavy materials, and many are more than happy to do it. If you have never had "classroom jobs", now's a good time to think about it.

The other thing that's probably worth mentioning is that usually the lethargy gets better in the second trimester, so if you're lucky, you might start feeling better later on. I know I did.

Furniture. Classroom furniture is notoriously awful. If you can, try to acquire some comfortable furniture. Office chairs on wheels to move around the classroom really help. If your school is unable or unwilling to help you acquire a more comfortable chair, etc, buy one yourself (a really economical way to do this is to visit a used office furniture store--most cities have one someplace). If even that exceeds your means, at least bring a soft cushion for your chair (I get mine from Goodwill since I tend to lose them a lot, working at so many different schools). The further along you go in pregnancy, the less comfortable things get.

Morning sickness: I didn't have a lot of problems with this myself, but there were definitely days where I did NOT feel on top of my game. During a lot of the first trimester, I felt a bit "off" and had the super blahhh feeling. What I found helpful was carrying around candied ginger, thermoses of mint tea, or ginger chews. Ginger works well for me, so I've used it all my life to ward off impending nausea, and found it worked just fine for pregnancy nausea. I also carried lots of small snacks and ate them whenever I could--the kids got used to seeing me nibbling on trail mix or drinking tea, and didn't even think anything of it. All of the above helped keep my blood sugar from getting too erratic, since who knew when I would have time to sit down and eat. When all else fails, you can often get the kids to bring you something from the cafeteria--I always had kids volunteering to pick up stuff for me at lunch time. Another thing that helped sometimes was opening windows (on nice days), or even taking the kids outside (for some fresh air). Being outdoors almost always made me feel better for some reason, and when I felt better, I was a nicer person to have around.

Hydration: Hydration is the catch-22 of teaching. As a teacher, you don't get the luxury of going to the bathroom any old time you want, yet when you're pregnant, you suddenly have to go all the time...and that's before you add any extra water into the equation. I always carried a bottle of water and sipped from it while I was teaching. I also drank quite a bit of juice.

As far as the bathroom issue goes, since I primarily work in secondary classrooms, I always ran to the bathroom between classes--the student bathroom, if need be--and take advantage of any planning periods, breaks (on classified jobs), or lunch times. If you have a buddy that you know has a planning period during a problematic time of day, you might want to come up with an arrangement to have them watch the classroom for you if you need to step out. Also, it's a good idea to bring your own water if you work in an old school building because your building may have lead pipes...that's very common around here.

How long will you be able to work? That in large part depends on your health, the manageability of your symptoms, your financial situation, your stress level, how much leave you are eligible for, and many other factors that are highly individualized. Another thing you can't predict is when you'll go into labor, so towards the final weeks, make sure you have your classroom ready to go before you leave the building each day, in case you can't be there the next day. One thing to think about, though, is that you might not want to burn up your maternity leave by taking a lot of time off on the front end.

I personally plan to work as long as possible. For one, I feel perfectly fine 99% of the time. For another, I need the money. Even without those two factors, I generally find that teaching and being around kids all day (even if I'm doing an EBD class!) helps me take my mind off of the less than positive aspects of pregnancy. I also tend to get bored easily, and need structure to stay sane, so I don't have any desire to take time off until I really have to. (For this reason, I'm not super disappointed that I don't have the luxury of doing the stay-at-home mom thing.)

Occupational hazards while teaching: The biggest hazard I had to deal with during pregnancy was the danger of getting sick from being around so many kids. I have a pretty non-existent immune system anyhow, so I was always a bit paranoid about getting sick and being around kids who come to school sick. Getting sick sucks even more when you're pregnant because you can't avail yourself of any of the things you would normally take to alleviate the symptoms. Even all my favorite cold teas are contraindicated during pregnancy (sniff sniff!).

Besides the illness factor, there's a few other things you may want to watch out for. A few that come readily to mind: Chemistry classes (chemical exposure), PhysEd (getting hit by flying balls), Special Ed (if you have a runner or a hitter in your bunch, or kids who are chronically ill all the time--I should probably also mention things like weird infectious skin diseases that unfortunately you see more of in this population). Another sucky thing is cafeteria duty (impossible if you're nauseated by the smell of all that food in an enclosed space--you should try switching with someone who has recess duty or bus duty if you can). Speaking of smells, I found the smell of lavender very soothing during pregnancy, so I took to carrying a bit around and sniffing it from time to time when I felt nauseated or stressed.

All those pre-natal appointments! When you're pregnant, you have a ton of prenatal appointments to go to (once a month on average until the end when things accelerate). For someone like me who could easily go years without seeing a doctor, such extensive entanglement with the medical community was one of the more shocking aspects of pregnancy. This whirlwind of monitoring has the potential to generate a lot of unwanted absences from work since these appointments are typically never available on weekends. The only advice I have to offer is to try to schedule them for times outside of the regular school day (after 4pm) to minimize the number of days you need request a sub. Demand for prenatal appointments is fierce, so it may help the sympathy factor if you let them know you're a teacher and don't really want to leave your kids with a sub one day out of every month. Plus it's a great excuse to get out of attending boring after-school meetings.

Well, those are just a few of the things I had to think about or deal with during the first half of my pregnancy. The good news is that other than the way I felt on some days, pregnancy didn't really impede on my teaching too much. I didn't turn into a completely different person, or become unpredictable and erratic, I was just a more tired and slightly crankier version of my usual self.

I was able to do most of the same things I had always done, albeit at a bit of a slower pace. I definitely sat down more, and made a point of relaxing when I used to always be on the go all day. Some days, I had to take naps when I got home, and was so tired driving there, I wondered if I would make it. I had to go to bed earlier than I had in years. But these were such minor things. Overall, I felt perfectly fine most days. I think the hardest part is still ahead of me...