Occ health and needing to rest/take things slowly?

[worstofbothworlds]

I was signed off with depression for a few weeks before Christmas. I arranged to see a counsellor with a CBT focus through work, and when I felt a little better realised that actually I'd been pretty low for a while and the acute crisis was just a peak if that makes sense. Or trough I guess.
I felt anxious about going back to work but I've been doing better and I'm trying to do my CBT thinking and am on anti-ds which also seem to be helping.
I have two preschool DCs and in general I'm never off work if they're both in childcare so the GP and counsellor suggested taking more AL for just me which has been helping.
My line manager feels that occupational health ought to be able to suggest something other than using AL for this. At the moment because they are preschool there isn't the issue of saving AL for school holidays and if I need an extra week to take a family holiday I'm planning to use my unpaid parental leave allowance.
Is there much occupational health can do to help me to rest more? A friend who works for my employer has CFS or similar and now works 4 days a week but as I already work part time and my long term productivity suffers (e.g. not being able to take on bigger or more interesting projects because I'm catching up on routine work) I don't want to reduce my hours further. I was actually planning to up my days when DC1 goes to school (but at least that would give me more AL to play with for days when the DCs are in nursery/school and I need a rest. At the moment of course I have a lot of days off work that aren't days off childcare)
The only other option I thought of was occasionally self-cert for the odd day e.g. if I've not slept (one of the things that precipitated my really bad spell).

[worstofbothworlds]

Been her a while but anyone got any thoughts?

[snowgirl1]

I was going to say you should submit a flexible working request to reduce your hours, but then read you already work part-time. Could you request to take some unpaid leave occasionally, so that you're not using your AL?

Do you have a partner? Could they do more at the weekends to allow you to rest?

[worstofbothworlds]

I do have a partner but even with both of us trying our best, the weekends seem to be a mad dash of getting all the jobs done, trying to spend time with each DC separately (this really helps with them being calmer/easier to manage we find, and is easier with the older DC starting to do activities etc.) and my DP has a few health issues meaning he also needs to rest at weekends. We generally find the weekends are easier if we take one DC each most of the time (so more restful than my days off in the week but not what you'd call full on relaxation!)

I could look into the single days' unpaid leave option but it really just adds up to the parental leave weeks' unpaid leave that I already have the right to ask for.