To take shared parental leave at same time as DH?

[coffeeforone]

So instead of DH taking some ShPL after I return to work, we take 2 months at the same time before I return? We get to spend time as a family and travel a little with 3 year old and baby.

The downside is baby will need to go to full time nursery at around 9 months instead of 11/12. wwyd?

I’d just check you can do that and get maternity pay. In most cases you can’t take shared parental leave at the same time and both get paid. One would have to take holiday of unpaid leave

personally id split the leave, one on one time with the baby is lovely for each parent (also a good lesson for each parent to know how much hard work it is).
Do you and your OH have annual leave for a family holiday once back at work?

Thanks - we could take holiday when back, but it's difficult to get approval for more than a 2 week stretch and we'd like to go away for a bit longer. Maybe the compromise is to overlap the leave for just the length of the holiday.

Depends on your DH. I've seen with friends that when they do that the mum just continues childcare and the DH acts like he's having aholiday. For me the point of parental leave was one on one time with the kid so that Dad is entirely self sufficient with the kid.

I know people who did this. Three months overlap and baby at nursery at 9 months.
It worked well for them because all their family was abroad so they wanted to travel a lot.

I actually didn’t know you could do this.

I think I would prefer one on one time with the baby. Plus, I think after spending day in day out with DH he would probably drive me mad!

You'll both need to check your individual work policies to make sure you can get paid at the same time - the last policy I looked at said it was OK but I've definitely seen policies where it's not.

Luxembourg makes a very, very good point - maybe as you say only overlapping for the holiday is the best approach.

Yes you can do this as long as you're not taking over a year in total. Only one of you would get the statutory leave unless you have better packages. I think I'd do it, if you won't get the opportunity to do it again and you're definitely going to travel. It's not your first baby so you will know what it's like leaving them to go back to work.

My DH doesn't get any company pay so we are just looking at the 39 weeks stat pay between us - Financially it would make no difference.

I think it sounds blissful, but it might be a bump when baby starts nursery but then, it always is anyway.

If DH took the time alone he would be entirely self sufficient so far as the parenting would go. The housework would suffer as he'd make more mess at home and has much lower standards than I do!

We’re doing this at 9 months when the stat pay has run out anyway. I’ll go back on to full pay at that point but as I still accrue annual leave while I’m off I’m taking 6 weeks leave before I actually go back. I think this will give us the best of both worlds.

It's a lovely idea. And it definitely is allowed under the shared parental leave rules.

Today my DP went back to work and our 10mo is at nursery. We split the leave so I had 7 months and he had 3. If we were to do it again I would definitely split it again. We are teachers so we got the holidays off together anyway, otherwise I'd take some shared leave together probably.