Surgery during maternity leave?

[Pinkstuffs]

Im wondering if anyone has been through this and can advise if I am entitled to any sick leave or pay? I suffered a birth injury when I had my second child and need further major surgery to correct it, the recovery time is going to be 6-8 weeks at least. My surgeon wants to schedule it for when my baby will be around 3-4 months old. It feels really unfair that this will be taken from my maternity leave. If I was working I would get full sick pay for 12 weeks.

You can’t stop and start maternity leave. You’d need to end your maternity then go on sick but that would shorten your entitlement.

No, you are not entitled to contractual sick pay during maternity leave.

It's worth talking to your HR team. I has very poorly on maternity leave, and my HR team left me on maternity for a while and then put me on sick pay once my maternity pay severely reduced so I could benefit from my 100% sick pay. They did make it clear though that once I was on sick leave I could not flip back to maternity.

I thought this was one of the reasons for maternity leave, to give you time to recover from the birth (and your surgery is part of that recovery). Obviously it is really unfair for those mothers who have more serious birth complications that require surgery to fix or your baby requires special care meaning you don’t get the expected maternity leave experience though.

I don't know the answer to this, but if you are eligible it might be worth discussing with HR whether you can return from maternity leave to access your sick pay entitlement, and then take shared parental lave afterwards. You don't have to actually share the leave if you take SPL.

This is possible although worth noting that even if the partner doesn’t take leave, they still need to be eligible. And you have to formally end your mat leave, which requires 8 weeks notice, so you’d need to tell them 8 weeks before the sick leave. Your employer can waive this and accept a shorter notice period but depending on them, if they realise what you’re doing and don’t want to have to pay the sick leave, they might not.

My partner and I are already using SPL, we have had to use it as I’ve been unable to care for my DCs since giving birth.