Self-employed working and newborn

[LillyVici]

I am new here and will be new to motherhood with nearly 40. Whilst I've grown up with 5 siblings am under no illusion how much work a baby can be having had to help out back then. My current situation is this, am working in IT on a rolling contract and love my job it pays for my lifestyle. I unfortunately have no luxury to take too much time off if I intend to stay in this contract. I live on my own, my own house etc. I am with the father and eventually closer to the time the Idea is him moving in. Nevertheless before I have a conversation with my assignment manager soon and try to negotiate an extension with flexibility, I was interested how other lovely mum's did manage work and newborns. I want to be equipped for the conversation as much as I can. Also I do save money as a plan b in case the contract won't be extended which I doubt bc they are desperate to keep everyone due to workload.

Am currently exploring my options/possibilities, spoken to recommend childminders/nannies and am due in Jan '25.

I'd be grateful for any experiences shared.😊

How soon do you need / want to go back? You'll need a nanny for a young baby, and a place to work away from said baby.

@longdistanceclaraclara well Ideally am looking to start 4-6 weeks after if I can negotiate that withy extension November time. I have an office room, that should be alright. However both of our families do live in our home countries (Germany /Brazil). So a nanny I suppose can help and if I can negotiate working from home for a while. As am not from this country it's all a blurred line.I'd rather be prepared for all scenarios.😊

I'm not sure how it works if you're self employed. I think the law for employed Women is that they can't return for 6 weeks.

I admire you if you can do it. My first barely slept and I know that I couldn't have managed to work whilst they were so young.

Have you got a plan of action to help you in the first few weeks like batch cooking some food, decluttering, getting food shopping deliveries and a cleaner, if you can afford to.

I currently have a cleaner once every fortnight and yes I have a friend who will be helping me, she's a nanny by trade, will need to speak to her how expensive she is. 🫣and the other half, the other half already cooks in batches for himself t hat might work out. He's employed and could take parental leave too. In term's of decluttering ? I do this already its only a 2 bed spacious apartment, lot's of changes. coming while I can. Am mostly concerned about juggling it all and work. I have to be open minded (already put savings aside). Ideally I'd love to take time off but it won't be possible for too long until I need to find a new contract.

Thanks for sharing your experience😊

I think your partner would be able to take parental leave and be a sahp for most of a year, if that works with your finances.

Really? My friend owned her own business and took only 2 weeks with her last baby as she couldn’t take more without loss of clients (beauty salon). Surely if it’s your own business you can go back whenever you like?

could you afford/is it feasible for your partner to take parental leave instead of you? This is what I did in a similar situation - took the absolute minimum period of maternity leave (4 weeks I think?) and gave the rest to him. It worked because he was salaried but he only received the statutory amount I was entitled to as self employed, no enhancement from his employer. It worked really well for us as I WFH and had some control over my workload. Was lovely to have that time as a family and for him to be so hands-on with our baby right from the start. I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

By law, it's two weeks women have to have away from work after childbirth.

I agree with the suggestion that your dp look into taking parental leave at some point during the first year.

Whether you'll be able to do any work will depend on some as yet unknown variables eg what sort of birth you have, what sort of baby you have, how childbirth affects you emotionally etc.

Take off the longest time you can as you'll need to rest as well.

I went back to work with both my children ( the second aged 40 ) within 2 months of birth, the first for one week after 5-6 weeks, when i had to provide holiday cover for a colleague, then I had another 2 weeks off, before returning full time, the main issues i encountered- that one week back at work was extremely difficult to maintain breastfeeding - baby was too little to have got them used to a bottle, i didn't have much time to get a decent supply built up. I was lucky as my mother had agreed to do child care that week , but the negative was she very much was pleased to do things her way , and in her opinion women didn't breastfeed, so she wasn't supporting it. Like, we had agreed i'd be home for a feed at 6 and most days I came in door at 5.45, to her just having fed baby as she was 'getting ready to cry', or she defrosted a whole day or two worth of feeds from freezer as she "knew the baby didn't like it cold," so it was unusable.

For my second we had wanted to use a baby room in a creche , but no facilities near us would take a baby under 3-4 months, so the only childcare option was a nanny for a couple of months.

The first return to work was easier as there was just us living in house for first few months and i basically adjusted my routine to 6pm feed baby, then me, remove tomorrow's dinner from freezer , put on load of wash, relax with baby, bathe and go to bed at 8pm, with baby in her crib beside me, I slept 8-11pm did another feed, nappy change , then slept again, woke quick feed , back to sleep till 6am feed . I wasn't overly tired and i think that's because i didn't try to do anything else mon-friday. Second was harder as when you have other adults and children in house there is more mess more housework, more meal prep, more people want your attention - and that baby never slept.

i would also say working from home with the baby there is extremely difficult, and coming from the employers side now, anyone with a new baby who tried negotiate new working from home contract with us is denied unless they have proper childcare in place.

I was 40 and essentially self employed when I had my DD (now 3), I went back to work after two weeks working from home. But my type of work meant I can basically do it at any time of day, as long as I could take a certain amount of phone calls/deal with emails/clients/emergencies during standard working hours.

I actually found it really easy in the beginning, because baby literally slept all the time, I used to baby wear and would sit at my desk working while she slept on me (I bought a silent mouse and keyboard!), my DH also took shared parental leave, so while he went back to work every few months he was at home for certain spells of time throughout that first year*

As she got older it became harder because she was awake more, so less time in the day to work, but I left who I was working for and started my own company when she was 1, she is 3 now and we both work full time, my DH on a standard shift pattern and I fit my hours around his shift, 4 hours out the house and at least 4 hours at home, it's hard now to do anything during the day when I'm with DD so I tend to wait till she's in bed and work then.

*If my DH hadn't taken the shared parental leave I don't think it would have been achievable me working full time, and the flexibility to work whatever hours you can is important too. But in the right circumstances as long as you both support each other you can make it work.

How does your dp feel about out taking parental leave or is he self employed too? This would be the obvious choice. Otherwise could you afford a live in nanny? You aren't going to be able to work at the same time as looking after your baby if that's what you were thinking? You also need to prepare for not wanting to be away from your baby, and how this will affect you and your baby emotionally.