Anyone with experience of going back to work from maternity leave pregnant or thinking about it?

[Illustrationaddict]

Hi,

I was just wondering if anyone could give me their experience of returning to work either pregnant, or considering it.

I'm currently off with dd1 who is 7 months old, but my hubby & I are having many conversations about trying for a second baby as we never wanted to have a large age gap between children, and, well quite frankly my body clock is ticking a bit!

I'm lucky in that I have a job I love, which is in the education sector. It is reasonably safe (can't be too complacent in this day & age!). I don't want to upset the apple cart in work by going back pregnant, although from what I've heard you cannot be discriminated against, but also I wanted to know if this would affect my maternity rights? Say I went off 6 months after returning to work, am I entitled to the same as before? Or do you have to work a full year to be entitled to this? I have worked in the same post for 9 years now, so have been here a while, but we would really struggle financially on one income, so don't want to risk loosing my job, or alienate myself from colleagues as the woman who takes the Micky with her rights.

Anyone with any experience of a similar situation out there?..

[Nicknamegrief]

My sister in law (she's a nurse) returned to work after a year off and was 8 weeks pregnant. She got a full round of maternity leave for the next one and started her maternity leave at 36 weeks.

She wasn't discriminated against but did lib/lie and say it wasn't planned it was. She did it again for number 3, and got the full lot of maternity pay again.

I don't think she suffered any discrimination at all and if she had I probably would have been told about it.

She did get made redundant after number 3 but they closed the unit she worked in and she actually was planning on not returning but hadn't told them (so got all her SMP and a lot of redundancy money). I was rather jealous at that gift horse.

I think its quite a common situation. Good luck.

[GrasshopperNchipmunk]

Hi,

Yes I returned to work from mat leave 10 weeks pregnant, worked for 6 months then went back on mat leave it was great

I work for a local authority so felt my job was fairly safe, def join the union if you've not already.

Mat leave counts as continuous service so didn't affect what maternity package I got, and my 8 weeks 'qualifying period' was in full pay so money wise it was the same financial package.

I did feel abit cheeky about it all, and waited until I'd re-established myself in the team before I told everyone I was preggs again! Luckily a couple of women followed in my footsteps shortly after so took the heat off me abit.