To only take two months off work?

[mollifly]

I am currently 11 weeks pregnant and I am starting to think about maternity leave.

My maternity leave package is not great, 4 weeks full pay, 2 weeks half then down to statutory.

Legally you must be offered 52 weeks but only 39 weeks needs to be paid.

hmm, didn't know that! Thanks for clarifying, although I'm still a bit confused on what the legal minimum is since everyone has posted different lengths of time and pay. I know what I am entitled to since I checked before TTC but didn't know how it related to the wider U.K. Minimum.

Will now go back to work with renewed vigour since they're clearly paying me more than they legally need to .

I went back PT when DC1 was 5 months and full time at 6 months. DP looked after them at home till 10 months when they started nursery. We are doing similar this time round.

In my opinion 2 months is very short. Things to think of:
How much will childcare cost vs earnings? Can you even find anyone to take them at 2 months?
Will you accrue bank holidays etc that fall within may leave? In which case you can add them on to the end.
Can you add lots of annual leave on to the end of mat leave so you can be off for longer but back on the pay roll?
What if you are breastfeeding? Pumping enough milk at work yo fed am 8 week old will take a long time.

With DC1 I only actually took 4 months mat leave but was off for much longer, IYSWIM.

I had a 'straight forward' delivery with my first.

That still entailed 4 months of constant bleeding. My husband actually asked me if I was going to die from blood loss

And then there were internal grazes. They don't sound that bad do they?
They were horrific.

OP you have no idea what kind of birth or PP time you will have. You could have a 20 min birth and get up feeling fantastic. Or not.

Please hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

I took 2 weeks and in one case 4 weeks and it was fine. You children thank you later if you fund their university fees not if you change 10 nappies a day rather than 5 and you can express breastmilk at work.

Only the first 6 weeks is paid at 90% pay so it is not true that you are paid for longer than that. If you earn very little indeed then statutory materrnity pay might be similar to your weekly pay. It is about £140 a week. That is a lot less than a lot of women earn and not enough to pay most mortgages. Remember you can share leave with a patner now so if he earns less than you do it may make sense to share it. I earned a lot mroe than my other half. not surprisingly as I took very little time off and always worked full time I have benefited my childen hugely.

I work for my self, and managed to reduce my work for the first two months. I've been back in the office routine for the past two weeks, DS is two months old.

I am the type of person who really couldn't stand the thought of being a SAHM (sorry, no reflections to those that are- I love my work!) and to be honest, I couldn't be one even if I wanted to due to finances. but I'm back in it now. I hate it and love it.

I like being my own master and feeling like me again, using my brain. But, if I'm really honest I also feel like shit, and I've cried almost every day for the past two weeks.

In fact I had the morning off to go swimming, the whole morning got messed up and I ended up missing the class and sitting in my car weeping for 40 mins. I wanted to do that one mummy thing, and I'm missing lol the classes and groups and lovely mummy things that everyone else gets to do.

I'm aware through, that a part of this is tiredness and hormones.

I have a nanny I share with my SIL, so I keep telling my self he's having a wonderful time with his cousins and learning and seeing things he won't at home. It's just me that feels shit. I miss him. And I'll not get that back. But then I want to keep my business going for when he's at school, and y'know.. the rest of my life.

2 months has flown by. Be kind to your self... Make the most of your evenings with baby. Take as much support as you can muster. And waterproof mascara.

With my first I went back to work when they were 19 weeks old... 4.5 months. I regretted it so much. I took a year with my 2nd and it was superb. We were skint but so what! Start saving now, you won't regret it

Your employer isn't legally obliged to pay you full pay at all. The only thing they must pay is SMP for 9 months, and that is only if you are entitled to it.

I managed about 14 months with my first because of accrued holidays. In some ways it was too long as I had such a lovely time that going back to work was torture.

I'm 18 weeks pregnant. I get a year off at my workplace 8 weeks on full pay plus 16 weeks on half pay plus SMP then just SMP but the last three months are un-paid which we can't afford so I'm going back after 10 months once my SMP time is up though I'd love to take the full year. As for employers treating you differently surely they can't do this? I thought you had the right to paid time off for all maternity related appointments.

As said above the information they have given you must be wrong as it is illegal. I went back at 6 months, it was fine but it only worked because DD was a good sleeper. At 2 months that isn't likely (it is possible though). I really would say 6 months is a minimum to get back to normal. I will take a year if we have another as i wish i had just enjoyed it more.

If you formula feed then something which worked for us to deal with the sleepless nights was having one night 'on' and one night 'off'. So if you were 'on' then you dealt with all the night wakings for that night and partner slept through. The thing which made this bearable was you knew that the following night you would have your turn sleeping through.

Certainly worked for us!

6 weeks off. Then back for 6 weeks for two days a week. Back full time at 3 months.

I'd say it really depends on what you want to do. My only worry would be if you were still recovering from birth at 2 months it's a lot of pressure to go back. I was still padded up and healing at 12 weeks, LO was breastfeeding around the clock and I don't think I'd had more than 2 hours of sleep in a night.

That is more than the statutory amount . After the 6 weeks you would still be entitled to smp until 39th week, at around £135 pw. You also need to be aware of any conditions attached to whatever they pay over smp.

I take it you've looked at all of your income and expenditure and checked everything that you'd be entitled to - don't forget to look at childminder benefit. SMP isn't actually that bad and you don't get taxed on it either. Can you switch utility bill providers etc/other ways to cut outgoings?

Full time childcare for one child can be pricy, have you explored that to see what the difference is?

All babies are different. Neither of mine started to settle until 3 months, both were very hard work until then. The first was known as an easy baby too. The second had a "relapse" into the early weeks at 5 months old where for a whole month she would only sleep in my arms. I didn't sleep well at all - about 2 hours a night.

In your shoes I would be trying to find ways to take off longer. Of course sometimes you need to do what you need to do and you will find a way to make it work if you go back at 2 months.

SMP is subject to tax.

After the 6 weeks the £135 a week is not enough for most people to pay their rent or mortgage though so a lto of women do go back quickly and those of us who are self employed (which I was for my last 2 children) don't even get that £135,

My post probably wasn't clear. During both of my mat leaves I didn't pay any tax because of the way it is calculated. Neither did anyone I know. It is taxable though.

But in reality many people earn more during the rest of the year so will be taxed on it.

Also it's £140 a week now, but that would barely cover a third of my mortgage never mind anything else, so it's not that great. It's only really sufficient if you're a low earner. Better than nothing, but nowhere near enough to be off work without significant savings in the bank, OP may well be in a similar position.

I was refunded tax throughout my maternity leave. Obviously my tax rate assumed I would earn at my usual rate for the year, and I didn't. Worth bearing in mind.

I think most employers assume 6 months off with the possobility of extending it to one year. Like a pp I worked up until my waters broke (quite literally at work) as I wanted more time with the baby.

I went back after 6 months with each of mine but split with DH so with our first he took 3 months and with our second we took 6 months each.

My advice would be take as long as you possibly can - you've got some time to plan. If your DP can take some time, do that too.

It's so hard leaving them when they're so little. I know a lot of people don't have the option - my friend went back after 10 weeks as that's all they could manage financially - but she didn't have nursery fees as she had great family support.

For us it was worth taking the year off with DS2 as I am the higher earner and DH's wages are pretty much wiped out by nursery and kids club costs. He's only come back to work to keep his pension going.

You have to do what you have to do, but take the longest possible time you can - you don't get that time back.

I took 9/10 months off with our DD and i hated going back - i wish i was off for at least a year.

We have already started saving up with when we decide to have another one, there will be money there to top up my mat leave wage and also let me stay off for longer.

In my workplace i received 6 weeks at 90% of my wage and then the rest was Statutory.