How much mat leave did you take

[Babydust00]

Not yet TTC but planning ahead thinking of finances and the likes

We aren’t huge earners, household combined income is just under 4k a month

I was wondering how much maternity leave people usually take? I’ve seen to take the maximum time possible. I know I have some time to decide yet but obviously it’s most people’s ideal to take the whole year. I can’t see how we could afford the 3 months unpaid- on paper we could, but it would feel like a huge drop. On the other hand maybe keeping in touch days and universal credit might balance it all out.

With my first, 13 months including holiday. I asked for my pay to be averaged so it was consistent across the paid time off. With my second, 7 months and DH had 5 months.

I took 4 months in total buy 6 would of been better👍

I'm about to go off and the plan is for me to take 26 weeks and DP 13 weeks of the "paid" element shared between us. We can't afford to take any unpaid.

I will have 5 weeks of leave and DP also gets 4 weeks paid from his work so that will factor in somewhere to bolt on.

So between us we will take close to a year, but some will be concurrently.

I am the higher earner by some margin and I also almost exclusively work at home, so it makes a lot more sense for him to take leave than me after the first c.6 months.

My occupational mat pay is really quite poor I think (12 weeks half pay). My last company (left 2.5 years ago) paid 6 months full pay.

When parental leave is over, we hope to both work 4 days a week (me condensed, DP to go part time) to save on childcare costs.

I get 26 weeks full pay followed by 13 weeks SMP, and I’ll tack a few weeks annual leave on the end. Will be roughly 10 months altogether

Dc1 6 months
Dc2 8 months
Dc3 14 months

About 14 months. Saved my annual leave and took 4 weeks annual leave before due date, DD arrived at 39 weeks so got a week back to add on at the end. Then took 12 months maternity leave. Took 5 weeks annual leave at the end. I got 6 weeks at 90%, 20 weeks at statutory plus half pay, then 13 weeks at statutory, but spread it out over the 39 weeks.

I think we saved £20k to cover the income drop and only had to use £6k in the end. Even in the 13 weeks unpaid part I still had money in my personal account as got child benefit, tax back and KIT days pay (but DH and I completely share income so I always had access to money anyway).

I was planning on taking 10 months (smp, no enhanced pay then accrued holiday)
Baby is 6 months next week and I've arranged to go back to work in 3 weeks as I've completely run out of savings
Would have liked to have taken the 10 months as now I'm stuck with an EBF bottle refuser starting nursery earlier than planned.

I took almost 14 months.

I think I am lucky in terms of our maternity offering from what I’ve heard of others experiences. My employer offers 26 weeks full pay plus 13 SMP then unpaid for the remaining 13.

So I took those then I used my previous year’s annual leave and some of that year to make up the other 8 weeks, so they were paid.

Worth adding i blithely worked up until 38 weeks thinking she’d DEFINITELY come late.

My waters broke on my lunch break on my last day.

Pretty decent I’d say. I would ask if you can spread it over whatever time period you want to have off.

I went back to work as a hospital doctor when DD was 4 months old. Couldn’t stand any longer being stuck at home as a bored housewife, all my friends away at work, nobody around in my village during the day except pensioners and other bored housewives. And there are no words to adequately describe the mind numbing hell of mother/baby groups…!

Five months off with each of my two. Had to go back when the SMP ran out as needed my wage. This was quite a few years back though.

Thank you x

Four and five months respectively. More than enough. Couldn't wait to get back. A year would have finished me off.

Really?!

Yes. It was, dare I say, rather boring. My friends were working. We had no desperate GP clamouring to take them off our hands, no walks out with the pram, no sleepovers you read about on here. I needed a break so had to pay for it.
Twenty years on my pension looks great and I'm eyeing up early retirement. Both DC now off at uni. All bonded just fine and my mental health intact.

Love it ❤️ good for you.

I had 2 months off before baby and 9 months after, I had accrued a lot of leave and had a very generous maternity package that was six months full pay then half pay. I put DS in nursery two mornings a week from 5 months so I could do a course one morning and go to the gym another. We had a baby group another morning and then DS and I would go out to lunch another day and maybe see one of the two Mum friends I made.

I went back when they received the free 15 hours at 2yrs 9 months.
I've worked in nurseries so there's no way I would have had a baby if I didn't have the option to look after them myself. Not much point in having a child if you're just going to put them in nursery full term in my opinion. Might as well just focus on your career if that's what your life is mainly going to be about anyway.

Why on earth did you have a baby then? Jeeze

6 months. We couldn't afford for me to stay off longer but I'd also check your companies policy - at my company after 6 months although they obviously had to allow you to return to work, it was not guaranteed that you would return to work in the same department. That seems to be quite common. I know someone from another organisation who ended up not returning to work because when she was due to return she was informed her job would be in a different department. On paper, same terms and conditions but in reality quite a different set up. I was aware that this would be quite likely to happen to me as another department were always short staffed so I returned at 6 months to prevent it

First baby - 6 months plus one months holiday
Second baby 9 months plus three months unpaid
Third baby - as above then left work.

Not true. Some people want a child. You just have to go through the baby stage to get that. Which is relatively short.
Career is irrelevant. Nursery is just a means of outsourcing the hardest bit for those that can afford to and have no help.

I think just short of a year (but DC1 was 11 months old) and for DC2 I returned when he was 10 months because I started a new job.

it’s a difficult thing to work out before because yes, the second half of a year’s maternity leave is a financial struggle, but once you go back and have childcare costs it sort of evens out.

Don’t forget that you accrue annual leave whilst on mat leave - so for that second mat leave I had 6 months paid, 3 months SMP and then straight onto A/L.

I went off on annual leave 2 weeks before I was due to be induced, started mat leave officially when he was born, and then was off for a little over a year but some of that was using up the accrued annual leave at the other end, and KIT days, so I probably only used 2 months of the unpaid time. For me, childcare costs were going to be so high that I worked out that, averaging things out, I'd be better off on maternity leave anyway.