Making money on maternity leave

[OrangeCatnip]

So my maternity leave starts on Monday (yay finally) if our little one arrives on his due date I will have 4 weeks without much to do other than lady muscle exercise, practicing self-hypnosis etc etc. I also desperately do not want to go back to my old/current job after my year of leave and so would like to use this time (and hopefully after he is born) to start up something, a little business or money making scheme so that I can justify staying at/working from home. I have worked out that I would need to make £250-300 a week to make up for what I would lose in earnings minus childcare costs. My place of work is likely to be filling posts in the spring so I am keen to see if I can make this equation balance before then or at least see if there is potential so i don't miss that opportunity unnecessarily. (my work place is boring and i'm looking for an excuse to move to something more exciting that i can justify to myself) OH is supportive either way.

I am in a creative field (think design and computers) and I am computer literate so happy to learn new skills if they are in that direction.

Yes know that my baby will take much of my time at first but by the time he is a year old or so I hope there will be enough opportunity for me to do this. Any ideas? I don't mind if there is an initial outlay to buy software or do some short term training. Have any of you started a business or similar while on mat leave?

P.S. Why isn’t someone taking advantage of this massive workforce of motivated out of hours staff??

What are lady muscle exercises? If you get a placid lump of a baby WFH should be possible, but with a feral little toad like I have well... Good luck.

I had to write a dissertation which was due in when my baby was a newborn. It nearly killed me but I did it because I had to. If you want it enough you could probably make most things work but it might be at a cost to yourself. Also it depends what sort of baby you get. For some of my friends, working in any capacity would have been impossible because they had babies and toddlers that just didn’t sleep. It makes such a difference to what you can do and your ability to juggle.

From the age of 4 months to 11 months my baby only slept on me for naps so work would have been impossible during the day but she slept through really early so I could have done work at night. Now at 19 months, she sleeps for 2-3 hours and I generally pick up some work despite it being a non-working day. The days I’m at home are full on as she requires constant attention and I’m knackered most of the time. Without her reliable naps, there’s no way i’d be able to pick up work.

Oh darling. You can't work whilst on mat leave, tis the same as working for a different job whist on sick leave. Your life is about to change in a way you could never imagine. Have you read the unmumsy mum? xx

Im a stay at home mum, I started my own ebay shop while on mat leave. It takes up about an hour everyday (my toddler naps 2-3 hours every afternoon) and the odd weekend doing accounts, stock checks. The business is really small at the moment but I'm adding to it each month. It is possible to work when my child naps and 7:00 -8:00 at night. The rest of the night is mine to chill!! I have a very supportive partner and I'm only wanting to earn £6000 a year so it depends what you want, but I say go for it! Good luck with everything xx

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I haven’t RTF - or at least, not every single post - so at the risk of repeating what PP have said, it will depend on whether (a) you breast of bottle-feed (you can’t get someone else to breastfeed for you, after all), (b) you get a Velcro/refluxy/colicky/insomniatic/unwell/premature baby who needs a lot from you, (c) you adjust to motherhood well or find yourself struggling, e.g. with sleep deprivation, PND, etc., (d) you have enough financial, social, and emotional capital to sustain yourself and a possible-initially-loss-making venture for a whole year, and (e) your baby grows into a contented, calm, rational one year old.

Just one of those needs to go wrong for the whole thing to become non-viable. That does not mean you can’t do it, but you absolutely do need to be realistic that you simply cannot know now what you will be able to do once baby is here. For instance, with my first (Velcro, refluxy, colicky baby) I went literally days without even managing to get a shower because he would scream himself sick if detached from me. Those were the hardest months of my life and the idea of even sitting and reading a book or watching a TV program were morbidly hilarious. I was so sleep-deprived I could barely function, let alone follow a plot. I would stare mindlessly at the news or crap like You’ve Been Framed because I simply could not process anything more advanced. The second time round, we got twins and based on the experience with DS, I pretty much expected to die by inches. They’re now seven months old and I’ve been marathon-training for the past five months. The two of them together are literally half as difficult as their older brother was. There is no chance on earth I could have started a business with him as a newborn or anywhere up till about now, with him at nursery. I could have probably had a business up and off the ground in the first days of the DTs coming home. Babies just are what they are, and people who smugly declare that others just didn’t manage to study/work/whatever during maternity leave because they didn’t try hard enough - if they have another baby, I hope they get a clone of DS, and then they can come back and tell me how hard I supposedly didn’t try.

You know yourself better than randoms on the internet! I found maternity leave quite easy going (although very boring). DD was a fairly easy and contented baby, although very vomity. She really wasn't hard to look after although I had to do 2 or 3 times more washing than I'd ever done before.

I had a month of ML before she arrived so once I'd had coffee with all the friends I could think of, I did my tax return and got all my other paperwork up to date and wrapped Xmas presents a month ahead! (good thing as she arrived on Xmas night/Boxing Day morning).

I was so bored 4 months into maternity leave that I marked 180 exam papers (online) over a couple of weeks. I needed the money, but it was intellectually stimulating in a way that it definitely wasn't when I did the same task again when I was back at work a year later.

Only you know what you're capable of and no-one can tell you what your particular baby will be like.

I say go for it - what've you got to lose?

Yes you can. I started a business while on maternity leave, and was back at my desk emailing and breastfeeding simultaneously when dd was 3 days old. Once she was a couple of months old I found a childminder for meetings etc. But she was my third, and her teenage siblings did a lot of childcare. I needed to pay the mortgage and knew going back to my job wasn't going to work. So I got on with it. Don't think it'll be easy though.

I’m a bookkeeper (I took a few years to study) and set up when my DD was 6MO but she reliably slept 09-12:00 every day and went to bed reliably at 7:30pm so I would work solidly whilst she slept and put in extra hours. When DD2 came crashing along as a complete no sleeper I had to put them both in nursery 3 days a week to be able to work.

I’d suggest getting an idea of what you’d like to do. Researching it for the next few months, honing your skills towards that service and putting together a business plan whilst your baby is very young. If things turn out very differently to how you’re currently imagining you could put your business plan away and revisit in a few months

It's not impossible.

I did a diploma and got a professional qualification during my first mat leave. But my DD was a dream sleeper and just the easiest baby ever. I didn't, and still don't, have any help from family or anything. DH and I just muddled through.

Now I have two and there's no way I could've done anything like that during ML with DS. Totally different baby. Really needy. And I was more tired because I was looking after two of them.

I guess what I'm saying is that you shouldn't discount it at all. Have a skeleton plan to put into action. But really it does all depend on what kind of baby you have and how quickly you recover after the birth. For example, you might have PND (I really hope you don't!). I had PND quite badly after my second baby and was just useless for about six months.

See how it goes and good luck!

I started by own business while on ML (which wasn't a year then, she's almost 20). I spent the first few months planning it, luckily it all came good, and after a year or two I employed other mums part time too, made a very decent living and support my OH while he went from a job that paid overtime to a desk job, and back. I had a friend who lived a couple of streets away with a similarly aged child and she was also working for herself (bookkeeping) so we more or less lived in each others houses with one looking after kids the other working away, plus we worked in the evenings and weekends. It all panned out, we had some great days out too. Once at school it was full steam ahead and that was the easy time as I only had the one child (my friend had a second, and found it harder)

I scaled it all down after a few years to look after ageing and terminally ill relations. After that I tried going back to my old industry as an employee because I thought I could do with interraction with other people - and hated working for somebody that really did not know their stuff as well as I did, so had to give that up, I still have the (much scaled back business) and it earns me a little but as OH has become self employed I do his bookkeeping and between us life isn't too bad

It can definitely be done OP - would you be able to freelance in you current industry to begin with or are you looking for a total change?

I freelance, have done for the past 2 years and when I started, ds1 was 20mths and ds2 was 9mths. It's definitely a bit more challenging when naps are dropped but I just adjusted when I worked around this.

Good luck - hope you're able to find a solution - working at home with kids is hard but I still love it

I did it. But it took a while to start earning. Also creative industry. When DD2 was 3 months old I started making a plan, studying and putting out feelers and doing some unpaid work to develop contacts. By the time she was 12 months old I started earning and a year later she was going to nursery 3 days per week. I then increased it to 4 days when she started pre-school at age 3. When she was a baby I could study and get organised because both my children were v keen on routine. So she would nap 3 times a day and from 3 months old she was sleeping through the night from 7pm so I could work in evenings. It was (and still is) extremely exhausting and I’m aware the only reason it worked was because both kids were routine led and brilliant sleepers. Might not have worked if they had been less predictable. But it’s enormously fulfilling and I love working from home. I get to take my eldest to and from school and never have issues with sickness or holidays. 3 years later I now earn near enough what I did in my last ‘proper’ job before having DD2.
So it can be done! Good luck.

Working for yourself while officially on maternity leave from your company may also land you in some trouble tax-wise. Leave is supposed to mean leave - you're allowed to do up to 10 days of KIT days but no more without losing your eligibility for maternity pay.

That isn't true.

I think it will be hard to concentrate with a very little one. 1-18 months is also the hardest time, although they do generally have a reliable nap time at that age.

But assuming at least some support from family/ working in the evening it is possible. I finished an MA when DD1 was a baby.

Best of luck OP. I never got maternity leave - was admitted to hospital at 36 weeks when officially still at work and baby induced at 37. May you not have a baby like mine who was wonderful but wouldn't sleep and you got nothing done. I used to read about that female Strictly judge who went back to teaching dance about 3 days after birth and wondered how she did it. 3 months on and there were days I only had one cup of tea and 2 slices of toast all day because that was all I got time to myself to do. And the "baby sleeps for up to 2 hours" thing I used to read about. No, your baby wakes up at 12 o'clock and again at 3 o'clock and again at 6 o'clock, even if they only went off to sleep at 2.05am and 5am and you're living on 40 minute naps and shaking with cold. Now go run a business.

You haven't mentioned dad in this. can he take parental leave and you start your business? And I would support the poster above who said about paying back if you leave your employer rather than go back after maternity leave. How much would you have to pay back?

As the others say, but when the time is right there is a very good website called themoneyshef. You could always put yourself a spreadsheet of ideas together with ideas and companies you could freelance for, to be revisited at a later date

Nt a pipe dream but you need need to be super organised. I worked up until a few days before I was due. I could only manage half days by that point as I was exhausted by the afternoon. I ended up being 3 days over but couldnt concentrate on anything for those days - my mind would just wonder and I couldnt even read a simple book. A new business needs to be focused on as does a new baby. You may instead want to look at training rather than a whole new business

I haven't read all the replies but some of them are quite patronising. I've written half a novel and learnt 2 new skills while on mat leave with twins. Your life and ability to do anything for yourself doesnt end just because you have a baby. Your baby might nap for 4 hours a day and sleep all night. Or they might not. You don't know till he's here and the amount of time you get to yourself will ebb and flow. A 2 week old is not the same as a 6 month old and that's not the same as a 12 month old.

By the way op... look at matched betting. I've done it and its easy money.

If you're creative what about personalised stuff you can sell on eBay eg party invites etc

I set myself the goal of reading an accountancy book for dummies (I’m so rock ‘n roll) during my first mat leave. It never happened. They take up all the time. All of it. DS is due on Monday. I can’t wait to meet him but equally keep looking at the moses basket contemplating the sleep deprivation....

Good luck OP and I hope you enjoy your mat leave.