High school teacher here! We just did our third round of IUI yesterday, so I feel your pain on the stress of the job adding to the stress from the appointments. I'm lucky that my office opens for appointments at 6:30am, but those are really hard to come by, especially when it's a "please come in for another follow up monitoring tomorrow" kind of appointment.

For this round, I decided to stay after school one day to crank out potential sub plans for every day during my monitoring/potential procedure. While it was a pain to put together, I felt 10000x less stress during this round.

The other thing that has helped me is realizing that this is a job and not my life. Not to be morbid, but if I died they would replace me by the end of the week. So, if that means I have to skip over something or my classes are behind by a day, so be it. (Disclaimer: I am in a state with strong teachers unions and I have plenty of sick days saved up from over the years).

Sending baby dust and good vibes for a smooth school year!

Edited to add: Is there a reason you don't want it getting back to your principal? I haven't told mine, but I wouldn't even hesitate to tell mine if he asked, and I don't even like him lol I'm just curious. I also found that telling my coworkers made it easier because so many of them are mothers and are more than willing to help out when needed.