In my post that last sentence should have read "Are you sure this is what you want" rather than what I wrote. Thanks for not taking it the wrong way.

You are in the exact same position I was in at the same stage. I love research but I'm not interested in administration in general and academia (for many reasons) in particular. I have the added twist that I also don't want to be an employee anymore but essentially it sounds like we are both dressed up but with no obvious place to go. It's very frustrating and unfortunately I can't offer any advice in that regard.
Second year PhD blues are inevitable and I got that too. Took me ages to get through it and, like you, unless I know where I am heading I find it very hard to focus. The inspiration came back in patches with surges lasting several months at a time but the blues came back out of nowhere on a regular basis. I was especially disinterested in the research work of other people.
It feels the same as burn out or brown out and there were many times I had to focus on the end point of actually gaining the PhD (I hate doing things like this but sometimes it's the only way to keep going).

The positive for you might come from considering industrial research as a career option.

But this isn't sustainable orchid. You simply cannot be going into work each day absolutely petrified of making a mistake. You are GOING to make mistakes. It's a necessary part of scaling the heights of a PhD.

Why is your supervisor getting angry anyway? It's not their PhD and they have no business getting on your back while you are trying to learn. Your success or failure should have absolutely nothing to do with their career. You are grateful that she kept her calm? Personally I would have told her to back off in no uncertain terms.

Your work shouldn't have the potential to wreck the work of others either. That is an insane way to organise a research group full of PhD students. You should be thinking about nothing but your specific PhD and not fretting about how your stuff affects other people.

I don't understand any of this. You have been put in a ridiculous position.

You say you still hold out some hope for a career in academia but as far as I have been told by many people in that job and through my own eyes, you will be doing the exact same types of things in that job that have driven you to the point of a breakdown. An academic at Cardiff Uni killed himself over the amount of admin work he was having piled onto him.

What you have experienced is part and parcel of an academic career.
Are you really sure you have thought this through?

If you apply for jobs before you quit you wont have a gap at all.

I wouldnt advise someone whether or not a loan was a good idea but at 22k and 6% you will only be paying £5 per month in repayments regardless of your debt.

You have only just started so you need to cut yourself some slack. You are going to make other mistakes in your PhD before the end so you need to learn to deal with that.
I would certainly set aside some time to get into the lab this week or today and start tying down some understanding of how the equipment works. You should try and prioritise that in my opinion.

Oh and yes, I'm afraid working with minimal supervision is part of parcel of independent research. You are going to have to expect that. I spent my first month learning all the tools I was going to be using, running tutorials I found online etc. This is all on you. If you are lucky you might find a colleague, a technician or another person to help you get going.

Do you have any papers publshed from your PhD?

PaperOrPerish,
Mistakes are part of daily life.
How many years have you been in academia and are you getting results commensurate with that number of years experience?

There is absolutely no guarantee that having a PhD will boost your lifetime earnings.

I'm not sure that it will be much comfort to the OP to say that a H&S risk assessment said the lab was fine if something happens to her baby because she followed that advice.
For a start it's worth judging the calibre of university employee who is making that judgment.
I wouldn't trust anyone other than the parents to make a judgment when it comes to workplace safety.

If you are working in a chemical lab you are exposed to the potential for failing or badly maintained fumehood filters and the cleanliness of your fellow workers. I have worked in many chemical labs and I have never seen one which didn't have filthy glassware everywhere - most of it outside the fumehood. You can control some things in life but you cannot control the behaviour of others.

My advice to the OP stands. You MUST put your baby first because nobody else will prioritise it. Take no risks with chemical labs.

We are only talking about a few months of pregnancy here. She can always return to the lab at a later date. It's not worth the risk IMO.

There will be risks to your baby if you continue working in a lab-based environment. You need to stop worrying about tip-toeing around your supervisor and address this head on immediately and then you need to drive this forwards regardless of what your supervisor wants or thinks.
You don't have a choice I'm afraid.

monkia,

In my opinion, you need to stop.
You are quite clearly not in a good enough mental state to succeed through a 4 year PhD at this moment in time and you are on the verge of making a disastrous mistake. A PhD breaks the strongest amongst us and you are already completely broken.

You should consider taking a job for a few years until your health has been sorted and then try again. You have to know when to stop.

koopa_beach.

As long as I have breath in my body, I will bang the drum about this.
Please STOP obsessing over league table rankings for universities and focus on your research. This nonsense causes more damage than almost anything else in academia.

You have a PhD position and you have funding.
Now get on with creating world leading research. Prove you are as good as you claim you are by delivering brilliant research outputs and nobody will give two hoots about where you created that research.

Gemma.
From what you have posted, I am completely baffled as to why you think there was any justification for a complaint against yor former university.
Your post smacks of entitlement regarding post-rejection support and immaturity regarding tweeting about your rejection and your unbelievably naive belief that there is such a thing as a "private tweet".

It would appear that during November, you sat back and waited for everyone to tell you what to do as regards funding and you got the exact result which that method deserves.

You have a PhD position and funding now. You should be grateful, learn very quickly about personal responsibility and drop any nonsense about making formal complaints.

Your last two sentences are worrying.
Are you seriously suggesting that allowing yourself to have a complete breakdown is preferable to saying No to people?
You need to reconsider this.

You have over-committed and lost control of what you are doing. No shame in that. We have all done it.
Delegation is the easiest way out of this and that should start in the morning if you have not already done so.
You need to regain and positively assert personal control of the things which are important to you. Not to your department or your colleagues or this conference. To you. Why? Because nobody is looking out for you while you are working hard for everyone else. Learning the power of saying No is completely liberating. You simply must learn how to do it.

On the positive side, you've learned something valuable about where your personal limits are. You are also about to learn who has your back when the chips are down. That is no bad thing and will definitely help you in the future.