Silverine08

I have been employed by my company for 5 years and have always received excellent appraisals and earned my discretionary bonus in full each year. Unfortunately, increased pressure at work last year brought on a breakdown in my mental health and I was absent for 3 months. I wont go into the detail but essentially my manager clearly decided she wanted me out as soon as I got back and spent 6 months treating me increasingly unfairly.

Finally, she asked HR to approve the implementation of a PIP which they did. On top of my managers general behaviour, this caused an immediate relapse in my health.

In terms of performance, my manager had not raised any specific performance issues before she asked me to attend the PIP meeting so it took me totally by surprise.

My understanding is that PIPs are used really only after an employee has worked with their manager on an informal basis but performance has not improved.

What I don t understand is, what process do or should HR use when approving a PIP. Can the P{IP be justified if they have no evidence that the manager has already raised performance issues and tried to resolve them? Can HR literally take my manager s word for what has happened?

Also, as HR were aware of my mental health history, should they have made some investigation into my current well being before approving the PIP?

Any advice, experience you can share would be amazing!

I stupidly decided to remove the fair hair I have above my upper lip with special hair removal cream and then went out sunbathing immediately after wards. It left me with two strips of rather defined tanned skin above my upper lip which look much worse than the fair hair I removed!

Is there any way of bleaching the skin back to what it was or will it go back to normal in time? This was about 3 weeks ago and it still hasn't faded (unlike the rest of my tan......)

My son is 5 months old and can flip onto his stomach and is desperately trying to crawl. He gets quite fed up on his playmat and doesn't enjoy sitting in his bouncer for more than about 10 mins. I play with him pretty much all day but would love to find him something that will keep him engaged on his own for a little longer whilst i get on with some household stuff!

Any suggestions? Is it too early for a door frame bouncer toy and are they even healthy?

I'm 38 weeks pregnant and for the last 2 hours I've been having some quite strong contractions (not painful but definitely uncomfortable). They're not completely regular between 15-20 mins apart and lasting between 30-60 seconds) and I haven't had a show yet.

Is this just false labour? My other half is working late tonight and planning on staying away as he has a really early morning meeting tomorrow. Do I get him to come home? Aaaargh! Help please!

I'm nearly 37 weeks with my second baby and he's 4/5 engaged. I know that in first pregnancies the baby can engage a few weeks before labour but I thought in second pregnancies the baby only engage just before labour. Does this mean he's coming soon?

Those who have had more than one baby - how much before labour did they engage?

I am shortly due to go on maternity leave. Under the terms of my contract i will be on full pay for 12 weeks and then on statutory pay for the remaining period of time. I have been working with my employer for about 15 months.

If they choose to make me redundant whilst I'm on maternity leave how does it work? I can't presumably get redundancyy pay as I have been there for less than 2 years. Would they give me my standard notice of 3 months pay? Confused! Any help would be much appreciated.

I had my 32 week check up with my GP yesterday and he told me that from feeling my stomach that I was definitely having a big baby and that my consultant was probably going to want to 'get this moving faster than full term'. I asked him how big and he said that he couldn't tell exactly but definitely over 9lbs at a guess.

I had a C-Section for my first and really wanted a VBAC for my little boy. Is there any chance that this is still possible if they decide to get him out at 38 weeks? Has anyone been induced with a VBAC? I know its not recommended but just wanted anyone's experiences really. I have an appointment with my consultant at 36 weeks so can't really speak to him before this..

I wasn't going to have a baby shower this time round as its my second baby and basically I have everything (from before or already bought new).

My best friend last night announced that she is throwing me a baby shower and asked what she could tell people to get as gifts. Yikes!!

Any ideas?? I have all the clothes and toys i could possibly need. Its really sweet of her and my friends to do this and I suggested that maybe we should just go out for lunch and not have presents but my best friend insisted.

Any ideas would be great!

I have just seen a question asking whether other people would consider adopting a child for a variety of reasons not necessarily to do with infertility. The answers that came back were a mixed bag but what really surprised me was how many adopted people were against the idea and how they believed that adoption should only be permitted or advised by blood relatives.

To these people - what would you suggest the alternative is for children whose parents don't want them or can't look after them? Is being racketed around from foster home to foster home preferable? I'm genuinely interested in this as I always thought that once I had had three of my own children i would consider adopting an older child (4 or 5 years old). Would this be really such a bad thing?

I'm almost 100% certain my little boy dropped 2 days ago at 31 weeks. I am able to breathe a lot better but I have quite a lot of back pain, pressure in my lower abdomen and need to go to the bathroom very regularly but little comes out (definitely not UTI - have had that before).

I was carrying quite high and you can see a definite drop in the bump.

Is there a risk that I might go into labour anytime soon? Is this something I should be seeing a doctor about (my next appointment isn't for nearly 2 weeks) or is this normal?

BTW this is my second baby and I thought that he wouldn't drop until I was nearly in labour.

Experiences please!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7737447.s...

John has left the building. I think its actually really sad. Yes he might have actually won but would that really have been so bad?

I'm in the UK and am 28 weeks pregnant. I had my 28 week bloods taken but they made no mention of a test for diabetes. Do they only do this if they think you're at risk? I know i should have asked at the time but I'm terrified of injections and was just pleased to get out of there without fainting!

I'm not due another appointment (and that will be with my GP) until 31 weeks. What do you guys reckon? Should I be calling up the hospital to ask?

OK - I work in London and have a daily commute of 3 hours (1.5 hours each way). I am also nearly 7 months pregnant and quite clearly showing. Every evening I get on the rather packed train and NO ONE (apart from one girl on one occasion) offers me their seat and I have to stand for at least 20 minutes until the carriage clears.

Now up until a month or so ago this didn't bother me so much but as I am losing my sense of balance a bit more and am feeling generally quite hot I actually don't think its all that safe for me to be squashed and pushed about on a train.

Why don't people offer up their seats? Does anyone else have this issue? Would you ask them to move for you or just try to more obviously stick your bump out?

Does anyone have any experience of setting up a home gym and whether its worth it.

I'm currently nearly 7 months pregnant and will be resuming my full on exercise routine a month after the baby is born. We are moving into a new house that has a small room in which we could put a treadmill, an elliptical trainer and some basic weights. Seeing as my gym currently costs me about £90 a month I think that this could be cost effective.

Can you have an equally effective workout at home using basic machines and weights as you can at the gym itself?

Has anyone got any ideas on what the must have items would be if I chose to do this?

I keep reading that you should be lying on your left side during the latter stages of your pregnancy to improve circulation for the baby. Now I understand why lying on your back is not recommended (lying on major vein etc)? but why your left side rather than your right I can't stay in one position all night and generally switch from one side to the other......

Am I missing something really basic in my pregnancy addled state??

For UK peeps

Did anyone see this last night? Anyone else think its strange that women who have had children who have grown up and left home should want to replace them with dolls?

One woman on the show spent £300 on designer clothes for her doll and another had a doll made up to look exactly like her grandson!

Freaky......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klmhNSu2ZbY

This is a bit of a long one so thank you for being patient!

I have known my best friend for 17 years now (we were at secondary school together) so as you can imagine we are very close. More like sisters. I have an 8 year old who I had when I was 21. At the beginning of this year my best friend told me she was pregnant. The man is question was someone who she was casually dating and stupidly had not used protection with on one occasion. She'd taken the morning after pill after 2 days but this had failed to work.

When she first told me about the pregnancy she told me that she wanted to keep the baby. We're both Catholic so in part that made sense. She also was in a good profession (not bringing in tons of money but enough), owned her own house (very very small mortgage as it had been left to her) and her own car. The father however would not be around.

Not to cut a long story short, after having been around the houses with this issue for a coupe of weeks she decided to go to an abortion clinic, initially just to get some facts and she asked me to go with her. I did and unfortunately I suffered a very strong negative reaction to the place. I found all these women coming in to get advice or actual abortions quite disturbing and I couldn't help thinking they were treating the life they had created rather cheaply. Some of them looked like they almost had pre written forms that they handed in on a monthly basis! You may think that I am being judgemental but it is just the way I felt about it. I'm not aniti abortion in some circumstances but I do believe that if it is a case of a 'mistake' happening then you should take responsibility.

When we left we went for a drink and met another friend of ours who knew what was going on. They started talking about how abortion wasn't bad and how you're not even ending a life its just a bunch of cells. Now maybe i was wrong in what I said next, but I had had a bit to drink and couldn't control myself. I got really cross and said tta if my friend wanted to have an abortion then fine, but she shouldn't lie to herself about what she was doing. If she didn't terminate the pregnnacy, in 7 months time she would have a baby, if she did terminate then she wouldn't. i.e she had to do something active to not have a baby and she had to do nothing to have the baby - this must mean life is present.

I then realised I felt too strongly about what she should do and I could no longer be impartial and supportive. I told her I had to take a step back and if she wanted to terminate the baby then someone else had to be there when she did this. She asked this other friend to go with her and the baby was aborted.

Wind forward a few months and our friendship is simply not the same. we tried to talk about it one night and I told her that I thought I had done what i had to do considering how I felt about this. I never mentioned the baby again after she terminated it and I thought that was best. She thought i should have put my principles aside in order to accompany her to the abortion and support her. Was she right?

I am now pregnant with my son and would in any other year have asked her to be godmother to my child. She has however shown no interest in my pregnancy or the baby (understandable considering what she went through?? IDK). Is she still the right person to ask?

Mostly I just would love us to get back to the friendship we used to have but I fear this is impossible. Any advice?

My partner and i are about to move into a (small) 4 bedroom house in November. We are moving from a 1 bed flat and would like to know how much can we roughly expect to pay for utility bills. we have a baby on the way and need to start working out a budget!

Many thanks

I was looking up some stuff on the internet in relation to resuming sex after giving birth and came across this from net doctor

http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/sex_relationships/facts...

I'm in particular concerned and intrigued by the section on oral sex. Is this true?? Can a woman really die from this?

I'm 20 weeks pregnant and have recently started getting 'vibrations' down there. What is this? It feels slightly like fizzing. Its not painful or anything but I didn't get this with my first pregnancy........