To think I can return to work 3-4 weeks after giving birth?

[RoguePudding]

As in title, really. I'm pregnant with my first, self-employed, and if I pass on this assignment because of the baby, I may be without income for much longer than we could afford. What is probably important to know:

• my job is intellectually challenging, but involves no physical labour whatsoever
• I can work from home
• It would be for about 16 hours a week
• 3 weeks would be the worst case scenario. The assignment starts five weeks after my due date
• my husband works fulltime

Is this feasible? Anyone else return to (parttime) work or perhaps studies very quickly?

Women used to return to work at the coalface the day after giving birth, I am sure you will be fine .

Orangebalon I’m sure that’s because the baby was left behind with someone to care for them full time ?! Like the grandma or someone..

I don’t think women were taking the baby with them to the coalface... and I also don’t think they breastfed in the case and instead had s wetnurse or some sort of substitute.

I also don’t know how these women dealt with bleeds, incisions, and tears the day after birth but I don’t think OP needs to put herself through that. We are a different era and different physically.

It can work.. but the minimization on this thread is unbelievable.

OP, after reading the description of your work then I would say yes, absolutely.
I have 3 children and whilst the first time around it is nothing that you could prepare for, after 4 weeks, you do get to grips with things, baby still sleeps a lot and if you bf, you can easily feed whilst typing and carry baby in a sling if you need to etc.
You will have to be flexible as to when you work - 30 mins here and there, but in my experience, then yes.
Sounds like a perfect work set up for the future too. Good luck.

Really wishing you good luck and agree that women all over the world do this. Personally, I felt I'd been hit by a train, was in shock and having no experience of newborns before I had to learn and come to terms with everything and was totally consumed. Could have done it with 2nd though, having done the learning. I don't think that is my failing and it probably won't be yours but it is a shock to mind, body & soul. Assignment or not you are going to need help, hopefully you have loved ones nearby. Stock your freezer with meals and get as on top of house-stuff as you can. I agree that after making, carrying and birthing a human you are meant to sit and feed for weeks after whilst your body recovers/replenishes. Some people do this watching box sets in the early days, some people google every baby related thing and it sounds like you could be working. Just make sure you have extra support for you, job or not.

I had my baby on 3rd May this year and my first day back in the salon was 1st June, just for a few hours, but I’m back this Saturday all day! It’s something we have to do when self-employed unfortunately. But I found it easy going back to work doing 1 day a week then back in my full time job after 9 months off, as opposed to having a block 9 months off then going back full time!

Congratulations on the coming baby! To be honest, no-one here can answer your question as we don’t know how the birth is going to go or how your child will sleep. My baby slept very well for the first 5 weeks then woke every 1-2 hrs for the next couple of years. Birth went ok (although I bled heavily until 10 weeks) so I could have done the kind of computer work you describe from home although I needed much physical rest. Out of my friendship group, a few could have worked from home very quickly, but two had to basically live in hospital for months while baby medical issues were addressed (all fine now) and another two had serious postnatal mental health issues caused by post-birth chemical changes (again, fine now). It’s a bit of a lottery and people tend to comment based on their own experience. Ignore any comments about how women in some countries go back to work straight away. Those countries tend to have pretty hideous statistics for the mother’s health!

I had my 3rd baby on a Friday night at ten and I was back at my desk Monday morning. I'd no complications whatsoever so I say go for it if you feel well enough.

And I really wish people would stop using the shitty things women coped with in the past to bolster support for less than ideal circumstances today.

So what if some women had to go to the coal face straight after birth, those people faced appalling working conditions that significantly reduced life span and left people with crippling health problems.

Until extremely recently (and currently in the case of developing countries) many more women died in childbirth, and there was a very high infant mortality rate. On the flip side when my mum had me, she was encouraged to keep smoking so she didn't get stressed, you were allowed to stay in hospital for a week and the babies slept in another room and they gave her regular beer for anaemia.

It will help if your baby comes out small enough for you to wear him/her without killing your back.

I couldn't walk for 6 weeks after birth without being in excruciating pain. I was a mess and didn't start to become 'normal' again for 3 months!

With a good sling, no newborn will be too heavy to be carried comfortably. DC3 is 5 months, 15lbs and can still be carried in a sling with ease (and I have chronic back issues).

Also just to mention in the places that women have to/want to go back to work asap it is their norm and society is structured differently to here.

Wellthatwastricky- high infant and mother mortality, women being encouraged to smoke during pregnancy and returning to the ‘coal face’ a day after the birth are indeed shitty. But you’re taking extremes here from well in the distant past

Many of us have talked about just 2 or 3 decades ago - which wasn’t ‘shitty’; it was just different to legislation nowadays.

Welcome to the new ways you will find your female biology will disadvantage you, sorry.

But actually I think if you plan to do the 16 hours when your dh is at home, and he is able to view it as you 'being out at work' and he also takes on more domestically, this could actually work out ok, and mean that you do develop more equal roles. Imho women develop superpowers after giving birth - but they can also break, so don't take on too much. And top tip, rest FIRST, work later, chores can take a raincheck - you will be more productive.

It wasn't me that brought up the coal face - I was pointing out how irrelevant it is.

And smoking wasn't the distant past, I'm only in my 30s!

But a number of posts have been along the lines of "in my day we didn't get all this maternity leave and it was fine" referring to the last two to three decades. Personally i think that even today maternity and paternity leave is still some way from ideal so I'd argue that what people had twenty or thirty years ago was shitty.

But it comes down the individual and what works for one may not another, which is ultimately the point. No one, not even the OP can actually know until she has had the baby!

It’s probably human nature to always want more than we currently have! If, eg: 2 year maternity leave was introduced, no doubt in a few years time people would look back on the bad old days of 2019 when women only got a year off work!

Ultimately it’s about balancing needs of parents with employers ... personally I think about 6 months is ideal - if I’d had a year out of the workplace I think I’d have got into a totally different mindset and probably found it hard to get back into ‘work’ mode!

There's a huge distinction between how you cope with a first baby and what happens when the next one comes along, and I think some posters are forgetting this!

With DC1, I was in the 'well I won't be sitting around in my dressing gown until 5pm' camp. Until he came along. And then I truly understood why this was a regular phenomenon! I had a short labour (just a tad over 4 hours) and a straightforward birth. But the disruption to my/our life was huge. Feeding, changing, dealing with colic, not sleeping for more than 3 hours at a stretch, learning to breast feed - hint - it's not a simple matter of 'popping them on the breast while you get going on the laptop'. It took a good couple of weeks before I got the hang of it, but by which time I'd also developed mastitis. DH was very hands on, but as I was breast feeding there was little point him having disturbed nights' sleep.

By the time DC2 came along - even shorter labour of 2 hours 15 minutes, and no stitches at all - I wondered what all the fuss had been about! It was so much easier second time around because a) I knew what to expect and b) I had been much more prepared for it.

OP - it sounds like you don't really have much option here, and I totally understand the anxiety about losing a client. My best advice to you is to listen to what people are telling you here about potential issues, and to believe them, rather than see them as scaremongering or over-dramatic and b) (perhaps more importantly) make sure that your DH also understands this, and that he is really prepared and able to be there to help so that you are available to work, and that he can facilitate this for you as much as possible. Oh, and c) the more help you can get from your families the better.

Absolutely - I take every experience on board and being now myself pregnant I know women aren't exaggerating or overly dramatic about the discomforts that accompany this state, so I am sure it is much the same after.

Not all countries where a much shorter maternity leave is the norm (for example, in France and the Netherlands new mothers have 10 weeks, and in Belgium 9 weeks) however are unsafe backwaters. I am not saying that this is what should be the norm - enough research has proven that a somewhat longer maternity leave usually works out better - but I do not think it is as ridiculous and unsafe as some posters here suggest to try and strive to be back at work quickly. Again, there may always be complications after something as complex and fundamental as giving birth. There are also plenty of pregnancy complications that prohibit the woman from working fulltime up until 36 weeks, but still that happens often enough without any significant problems.

And I do think, based also on what I have read here, part of what new mums run into is that people here still somehow prioritise the man's career over the woman's. If the father does not do night shifts or a larger proportion of household chores so his performance at work isn't affected, whereas the woman therefore needs a much longer recovery period that delays her ability to return to work - that goes beyond biological differences and puts the woman in a disadvantaged position when it comes to financial security. And I don't mean to judge the individual families who have figured that this is the way that works for them, but it still feels like a systemic problem to me.

RoguePudding childcar forsmall babiese in France is widely available and subsidised.

6 weeks leave should be medical leave for the mother after a birth and then potentially another 6 months each, per paren, absolutely separate and additional to the post partum recovery period, IMO.

I think people encouraging you are overlooking the fact that you intend to be working without using childcare when your baby is potentially mobile.

Early on you might be physically a painful mess no matter how you share tasks, later someone who isn't simultaneously doing separate, non child related, paid work needs to be doing childcare.

My husband was extremely supportive, but being a man he simply couldn’t breastfeed!! But, the beauty of breastfeeding is that you can just latch them on and doze, feeding lying down is something I perfected quite quickly.

• sorry, somehow lots of final letters of words went missing in that post!

Also wanted to add that not all newborns sleep a lot.

My dc1 was born at almost 42 weeks gestation, just over 9lb - she had a sleepy twelve HOURS, after which she was awake and very alert most of the day, and she had reflux which meant she was an absolute pleasure and a delight as long as she was held upright but a howling beetroot red suffering mess if put down within an hour of a feed. She fed a lot and put on weight and grew fast, but probably also to sooth the reflux pain. She could be put down if carefully timed for a couple of 45 minute naps per day, but was also hard to put down at night due to reflux. She held her own head up from a few days old too, and generally behaved like a 6 week old. I assume partly due to gestation and birth weight. She rolled over constantly as soon as she worked it out at 11 weeks and from that point didn't remain in the place she was put down, and commando crawled very fast and efficiently just before 5 months. RoguePudding it would be impossible to do substantial periods of written work to a reasonable standard when looking after a baby like that.

My other babies were born at 38 weeks and were only around 8lb each, and did the classic sleepy first few weeks, though one of them didn't sleep much at all after that until he turned 3...

The plan to take on a 5 month contract without childcare and start when you may well not have physically recovered from an emergency cesarean or 3rd degree tearing etc seems mad.

Of course it may all come together, but it seems foolish not to plan childcare at least, and 3 weeks post birth is betting a lot on a straightforward birth...

Not sure my first Ds felt like I had been hit by a truck. 2nd and 3rd felt like I could conquer the world!!!!! Home birth with ds 3rd child and had a bbq next day! Can you get help? My mum came to stay for 2 weeks with the youngest 2 of my babies. It was lovely breakfast in bed housework washing and ironing done. Its hard to know everyone is different. I am sorry though that you have to worry about instead of relaxing.

So true

I've just gone back and read the thread again, and this jumped out at me:

DH taking paternity leave would sort of defeat the purpose

What did you mean by that?

And you say that the assignment will take 5 months - do you have any way of influencing this, so doing it over a shorter period of time, or is it calendar/date-specific, meaning it would have to run for this length of time?

If you have a bad week, and don't manage to fit in your 16 hours, would that matter? Could you catch up in a following week?

How much holiday does your DH have? Could he perhaps take a half or one day off a week to look after the baby so you can have a solid 'block' of time?

Are you prepared to consider formula feeding? Personally I'd have hated to do that, despite the issues I had getting going (both times!), but as PP have said, expressing is really difficult to achieve before your milk supply is established. And the obvious advantage of formula feeding is that your DH can share this with you, so he can do some of the night feeds - allowing you to sleep a bit more, so that you can be intellectually sharper. It would also mean that he could take the baby - possibly take it out for the day/afternoon, so leaving you in peace to focus on your work.

You talk about your mum flying in - so obviously she's in another country. Is she able to come again, a bit later on in your leave, for another block of time?

I can understand why you want to take this assignment, but I think you need to think a bit more about how you are going to handle things, rather than just hoping for the best!

Sorry - DH is actually taking a week of paternity leave. Outside of that, he is only eligible for unpaid parental leave, which would leave us with a similar - or even greater - drop in income. Unfortunately, DH does not have a lot of holiday days left because he already had to take quite a few because I needed surgery at the start of the second trimester and was completely bedridden for a while (all fine now). There is the occasional day he could take, and we're saving those for when they are sorely needed. :-)

The start and end date of the assignment is fixed, as is the length. However, I will have quite a bit of flexibility in hours (one week I might work 10 hours and another 20).

I have no problems with formula feeding. I'd like to try breastfeeding, but we'll see how it goes and I am really not fussed if it does not work out.