To ask how many days you went back to work after kids?

[moneymatleave]

Just wondering. On my first maternity leave and love spending my time with my baby. Childcare places are in short supply, due to moving house we still aren’t sorted for next September so not sure what we are going to do really. I don’t really like the idea of my DC doing long days in nursery certainly until they are at least over 2, ideally nearer to 3. If I dropped two days a week of work I would lose £800 a month which is nearly half our disposable income as a family.

Considerations against PT are any future maternity leaves and my pension contributions. Less worried about my pension for the next 5-10 years as I am in my 20s and have lots of working years ahead.

I’m just not sure what is best and want to be able to spend more time with my baby than they spend in childcare as I already know how fast it goes!

I also think a nanny or childminder is much better for very small babies, as they can attach to just one caregiver, unlike at a nursery

Im going back on 30 hours. I do 12 hour shifts so I do 2 long days or nights and a half shift either an early, late or non clinical shift doing management work.

Previously I did 36 hours which was 3 long days or 3 nights and a short shift. My
Roster looks beautiful now!

I dont think wfh with a baby is generally a good idea.

I worked 4 days and took 1 day annual leave every week. Full time with my 2nd

We both went back to work full time (40hrs a week). Nursery has been excellent, they have a key worker and ours has always built up a great bond and they’ve made loads of friends. We don’t regret our decision at all, it’s been brilliant.

We both went to three days a week, as we’re a partnership we were in agreement that unless we can both afford to drop hours no one drops hours.

I went back full time as I was the higher earner. DH dropped down to part time. We felt very fortunate that we were able to do this as two full time working parents is hard. Obviously some people have no choice. As soon as we had kids we were entirely 50/50 on everything including pension contributions so that DH wasn’t disadvantaged by going part time.

After my first maternity leave I did 22.5 hours over 3 days for 7 years, excluding my second maternity leave. After that, and when my kids were 8 and 5 and in school, I changed jobs and now do 30 hours over 4 days.

I didn't find that 22.5 hours enough to really feel like I had a grip on things at work, although it doesn't help that they gave me the workload of a full timer.

But now, I find 30 hours over 4 days more than I want to do really, I feel run ragged but I'm single now so I don't have much of a choice.

I went back 5 days when my daughter was 6 months old but she continued to be at home with her grandmother until 12 months then went to FT nursery. Financially, the situation was similar to yours at the time. I worked in professional services global organisation and though I was on low wage, a gap in employment would have hurt me a bit. My daughter is now 16, nearing her GCSEs and I am on a very, very good wage, was able to give her private education, but....because of mental load of parenting and working full time, I seem to have internalised very few memories. got videos and pictures but feel like a stranger looking at them.....

I went back two days ago week. It didn't affect my career progression at all (though obviously I took a big hit with my pension). No regrets.

How did that work? Did you have 52 days annual holiday allowance??

Full time 5 days with the first one child.in nursery.

Now on mat leave with my second. I was planning on doing the same but even with the 15 hours "free" nursery places have gone so expensive we xan no longer afford to do it and so I am negotiating condensed hours so full time over 4 days . With my husband doing the same. This will mean 3 days in nursery . We have no family help, and a 10 year age gap with kids . No idea how people do it with the smaller gaps.

Are you sure that your role is available part time? Mine wasn’t, went full time, rather than leave baby in nursery I mixed it with part time nursery/a nanny a couple of days a week. So baby had time at home

4 days. I tried to go back 5 days and it was too much for both me and DD.

I would like to drop down further to 3 but this would not be an option in my current role.

First baby: Full time, but my husband went part time (3 days a week) for a year. She went to nursery part time at 1 and full time at 2.

Second baby: Full time, but compress 10 days into 9. My husband does the same, so he goes to nursery 4 days and we alternate the childcare day.

I took 13 months maternity leave both times.

Yes some of the week but not sure I could multi task that.

I worked 20 hours when mine were little, three evenings and Saturday mornings.

Worked really well for me.

I've done between 3 and 5 at different points, with a year as SAHM/masters student.

Currently doing 30h across 4 days which is fine. Though in an ideal world I'd like slightly shorter days so the DC didn't have to do breakfast and afterschool club two days a week.

I went back 3 days 9-5, down from 5 days. I didn't want to go back 5 days. DC is with a childminder as we didn't want a nursery. We won't have any other children. I need to increase my pension contribution in the new year when our funded childcare hours go up. I will likely stay 3 days unless I move to a different role, as it wasn't easy to get my hours reduced.

Sorry, I should have said until it ran out. I had acruued annual leave during my maternity leave so I just added it to my allowance, which was 33 days. We can also buy 5 days AL.

12 hour shifts so 3 days (or nights) a week. Which is what I was doing pre-children anyway. It was a good balance - full time pay but with 4 days off a week to spend plenty of time with dc.

5 days a week each time, with each child immediately attending nursery 5 days a week. It was grim but I had no other option.