My Teacher is Having a Baby! Part Three

Hi Friends! I am back with the third part of my three part blog series, My Teacher is Having a Baby! Today I will talk about how I have survived the third trimester, how I am prepping for my upcoming leave, and my sweet school baby showers!

My third trimester started out well! I was feeling good and excited to see the end in sight. As the weeks went on it started to get harder and harder…moving was difficult. Going from being a marathon runner to taking forever to walk down the hall after dropping my students off was difficult. Somehow I’ve been able to survive though!

One wonderful thing that helped was a chair that the director of building and grounds put together for me. I have been having sciatic nerve pain and there really hasn’t be any comfortable position. He heard about it and found two pieces of unwanted furniture around the school and made me the perfect chair. I highly recommend something like it if you have the same pain!

My biggest suggestion? Don’t push it. You can’t be the 1000% teacher you have always been when you are in your third trimester (or pregnant for that matter!) It’s okay to not sit on the floor while playing a game and to ask your students to help you. Mine have loved picking things up for me and getting things for me so I don’t have to move too much. They have become so used to it, it’s habit for them now. It’s pretty sweet!

Now on to an important subject…maternity leave! Planning out a maternity leave proved to be more difficult than I originally thought. That could have been because I tend to be a bit OCD about my classroom. Aren’t we all though?! Here is a list of what I ended up doing:

*Cleaned Classroom – I started by cleaning out my classroom. I didn’t want a lot of junk laying around and wanted things to be organized so that someone else could find them. I labeled everything so that it was clear and so that I could hope that when I returned they were in the same order. After I finished this I took several pictures for a “room tour” explaining the layout.

My math closet! I have labels on all of the materials and also on the shelves so my subs know where the materials belong!

*Organized Curriculum – I make a year planner every year. Check out a post about it here. I made sure that plan was up to date with where our year has taken us. I also went through and marked in the materials what we have not gotten to yet. That way my substitute knows what to pull from for the rest of the year.

*Made Binders – My last day is planned for April 29th and I will be out through the school year which ends June 9th. Although that is not too long, I plan to be out in the fall and return the week after Thanksgiving next year. Therefore, I wanted to make sure each area of my day is spelled out for the person that takes my leave in the fall. It is important to me to be able to walk back in after Thanksgiving to a classroom that I am familiar with. I went into A LOT of detail in each of these binders, if you would like to know more about what I specifically put in them email me!

My binders. Minus one – Math!

A peek inside one of the binders.

*Gifts – I had to think about all of the end of the year areas that I would be missing. I put together gifts for my students, assistants, room parent, and for the teacher that is taking my leave! This area was fun to prep! (I will add a picture later – do not want to spoil anything!)


*Planned First Week – The last thing I did was plan out the first week for my substitute. I tried to make it as easy as possible. I actually have plans from now (I am 36 weeks) until I plan to leave done, copied, and totally ready to go. This made me feel better if I were to go into labor early.

Plans for a week.

Thank you for sticking with me and reading all about my journey! I would love to hear more about your experiences of being pregnant and teaching!