How to Teach With Morning Sickness

The challenges of teaching are made even harder for many mom-to-be educators by the onset of class-disrupting morning sickness. If you make your living as an educator and are about to become, or have already gotten, pregnant, you will likely have to contend with this challenge. While teaching with morning sickness is undeniably more difficult than educating while you feel well, morning sickness does not have to hamper your teaching efforts all together. By planning for your morning sickness and doing things to minimize the degree to which you experience nausea, you can make it through your morning teaching hours more effectively.

• 1

  Speak with your administrator. If you only suffer mild morning sickness, it might not be necessary to mention your pregnancy-related nausea to your school administrator; however, if your morning sickness is severe, it is likely wise to alert your administrator to this issue so that he or she is ready to respond with a substitute or help you arrange your schedule to accommodate this difficulty.

• 2

  Ask a nearby colleague for assistance. If your morning sickness leaves you running to the bathroom frequently, asking a neighboring teacher to assist you is a wise choice. This close-in-proximity co-worker might be able to monitor your class should your nausea force you to leave the room.

• 3

  Get up earlier so you can rouse slowly. While pulling yourself out of bed might seem quite difficult when suffering through pregnancy-related bouts of exhaustion, getting up a bit earlier allows your body time to adjust to being up and might reduce the likelihood that morning sickness hits while you are at work.

• 4

  Get an adequate amount of sleep. For many women, exhaustion triggers morning sickness. Because you will be getting up a bit earlier, go to bed earlier to ensure that you still get adequate rest for you and your developing baby.

• 5

  Eat breakfast. While a logical response to nausea is avoiding food, for many women hunger can increase morning sickness. Start your day with a balanced breakfast of lean proteins and whole grains, as foods of this type stick with you better.

• 6

  Stay hydrated. Keep a bottle of water at your desk and sip away throughout the morning. Not only is staying hydrated healthy for you and baby, drinking water might help squelch your nausea.

• 7

  Identify and avoid school nausea triggers. Determine if certain school-place smells lead to your nausea. For example, if coffee brewing in the teacher's lounge causes you to feel ill, take care to avoid this location.