Coping with work when you’re feeling sick

As I sit and write this article I am 13.5 weeks pregnant. For seven weeks now I’ve suffered extreme nausea. Nothing prepared me for how to cope in my business over the past two months. Here are some ways of coping with work when you're feeling sick.

Pre pregnancy, I felt well informed about the changes I would need to make to my business to allow me to balance what is important to me as a mother and what is important to me a business owner flying solo.

But there was no guidance on how to adjust my work demands, plans, expectations and routines to balance the needs of my business and the needs of my body.

The nausea persists from the minute I wake up in the morning until the minute I go to bed. As my day progresses, I feel worse rather than better. It is like having a two month hangover.

Naturally this makes it very difficult to have the mental and physical energy required for coping with work and running my business in the way I would like to.

I have a number of pregnant friends who say “you are SO lucky to work from home and have no one else to answer to”.

On one level they are right: I am lucky to have control over my day and to be able to curl up in bed when I become too nauseous to function. Still I feel intense internal pressure to keep my business running well, even though I cannot stay productive for an entire day.

My friends don’t appreciate that there is no one else who can coach my clients for me, that I don’t have a team to delegate to, that I don’t get paid sick leave and that I am responsible for the well-being of my business.

A few of the lessons I have learnt over the past two months for coping with work when you are feeling sick are:

Accept illness is unpredictable

No day is ever the same. Just when I think I have my functionality pattern figured out, and my work schedule adjusted to match … it all changes again! I have had to accept this as a current fact of life.

Adjust expectations

The hardest thing for me to do was to adjust my expectations of myself and my business growth and success. I had a grand vision for growth and exciting new projects to develop and implement for in 2008. It was hard for me to accept that it would now take me longer to implement these plans or that the scale of them needed to be reduced.

Simplify life

This applies to business as well as personal life. There is finite amount of time each day where I feel functional. It is important that I use it on the things that matter most to me.

So, I have engaged a cleaner for the house so that I don’t need my energy for that. Meantime, dinner menus have become somewhat basic so that cooking at the end of the day is not time consuming. I have also learnt to say ‘no’ to extra meetings or activities that are not essential.

Do what you have to do and let go of the rest

Some days I will have four or five coaching clients, which takes a lot of energy. On these days nothing else appears on my “to do” list. My focus is being well enough to coach and nothing else matters. Often that means coaching a client, going back to bed, coaching a client, going back to bed ….Everything else can wait for another day.

I wait for the magic day when my ‘all day’ morning sickness disappears and I find the new energy that the second trimester of pregnancy promises to bring. Apparently this is just around the corner.

Until then I continue to do the best I can do within my business and respect the needs of my body. I look forward to continuing the journey of flying solo as my pregnancy progresses towards motherhood, when a whole new set of challenges will arise!

Linda Anderson is a Certified Professional Coach dedicated to helping people live bold and rewarding lives. Linda has an energetic and direct style of coaching which suits people who like to be challenged.

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Hi Linda, firstly congratulations on your pregnancy and for hanging in there. It will get better (although the nausea may last longer than you think - it does with some people). I have just experienced a 3 month illness which caused me to struggle day- by-day to breathe. Unfortunately it was a double whammy - a lung virus at the same time as being unwittingly poisoned by a potplant (Flamingo Lily) I had on my office desk for 4 weeks. (Beware of many plants, especially lilies - I have learned they are toxic to some people and to children.) The result of which every sinus cavity was completely blocked (ct-scan in 10th week) and there was no way I could breathe through my nose. Each day was a struggle as I had regular deadlines to meet and needed to turn over some income. As solos, our anxiety levels can go very high at this point. However, in those weeks I worked less hours - I would prioritise, then rest, then do what was next. In that way, it worked out and is an advantage of a home office. But I do appreciate how hard it is. For me also, not knowing what was wrong with me was frightening, which was only diagnosed correctly late in the illness. Asking and accepting help either from family, friends or professionals for household chores or meals was very helpful. I would have a short list and my family and neighbours took turns in getting things for me or driving me to appointments, for which I was very grateful. Learning to accept help was hard. Now I am getting better and work and life is very much back to normal. I also had to accept that what I had planned for these few months was also put on the backburner. But I came through the experience having learned much, as well as the importance of taking care of one's health and going on instinct to get a second opinion if you don't agree with the diagnosis. Don't lose heart - our instincts tell us more than we realise - it's just that when we are ill we find it hard to hear that still, small voice. All the best for your pregnancy. Karen Curran from Springwood
From a personal perspective, Linda, the reward is obvious and from a business perspective, it sounds like you're getting 1st hand experience of how to help your clients through a phase for which many will need your help! Grant Hyman from Sydney | Read my articles
Hi Linda
Congratulations on the pregnancy and on keeping the coaching business going through such a difficult time. Coaching takes concentration and I can only imagine how difficult it must be for you to keep it together and do your best for your clients, as I know you do.
All the best
Carole Carole Riley from Sydney
Hello, Indeed - accept sickness as unpredictable! I have been modifying my work so that, if I am sick, I don't become irreplaceable - in a small business, everybody knows there own info but sometimes it can be hard to find out this info if that person isn't there. Make your job known! So if you do get sick, someone else can pick up your job load. Jess from Zulu Graphics, Best Screen Printer in Newcastle
Linda, this was a great article with really useful advice. One of the most important things you mentioned is the fact that you respect the needs of your body. Unfortunately I have seen clients nearly go out of business (due to burnout and recurring illness) because they have neglected to do just that. This is such a sad situation, and yet it is quite preventable. From your article, I can see that your business is of course a huge and important part of your life, but that YOUR life, and the life growing inside you is more important than anything else in the world. Nice work! Karen's comment included accepting help from other people, which is also great advice. On the topic of morning sickness, yes it can be totally debilitating, but rest assured, there is light at the end of that very queasy tunnel!! Apparently eating ginger works, though it didn’t do a darn thing for me. One of the greatest cures for some people's morning sickness is giving birth to their baby after 9 months!! Continued success to you Linda. Lucinda Lions from Sydney, Australia | Read my articles
Hi Linda and thanks for a great article. I am now 8 months pregnant and doing well but was totally knocked out with "morning sickness" which persisted all day long in the early months. I have a small custom sewing and handmade gifts business and couldn't even summon the will to enter my studio let alone get a project finished. Then at about 16 weeks it was like someone "turned the switch off". The sickness vanished and my enthusiasm and energy came back in spades. Anyway, thanks for the great advice and good luck, it will get better soon! Marina from Sydney, Australia

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