How long was your Nancy's maternity leave?

[Fridayschild]

Both my previous nannies have gone on maternity leave and not come back! But nanny 3 will come back by mutual agreement with her child once s/he is born. Nanny says she will get bored at home with just a small baby and hardly need any maternity leave at all. I seem to remember small babies can be quite time consuming, actually, and think Nanny is a bit optimistic.

My Dc are both at school. One gets there and back under his own steam, the other could be taken there on the school bus. So in term time we could arrange Nanny to have quite short hours really, as long as she can collect DC2 at about 3.30pm each day. So she would collect a child and feed two, supervise homework. I can see that this might work.

Stupidly I forgot to ask the due date in the excitement of her her news, but I suppose if she took 3 months mat leave she would be on leave most of the summer holidays when XH and I go away. I could make use of holidays clubs and impose on my parents over the holidays - gulp. Even so neither of my DC slept through till they were 9 months old.

But your views on how long is long enough would be great. And did anyone have a nanny who came back from mat leave too soon?

Am I the only one who doesn't have a Nancy?

Sorry, OP.

Well spotted! And I checked the rest for typos soooo carefully

I don't think she has to give a return date until after the baby's born does she? I know people who have returned to Childcare after a couple of weeks and others who've waited longer.

I'm a nanny and I went back to work after 7 weeks may leave. I thought it would be easy as I've looked after loads of babies in the past. How wrong I was! I should never have gone back to work so soon, I wasn't ready but didn't want to admit that. Luckily my baby comes with me and I don't work full time. I think I needed to have at least 3 months min, ideally 6 months mat leave.

Mat leave not may leave, silly phone!

I took 9 months mat leave and returned to 21 hours over 3 days (DS was 7 months at that point, I went on leave at 34 wks as was struggling). Definitely do-able earlier, a nanny friend just returned after weeks!! I would have struggled returning any earlier as DS exclusively b'feed and wasn't sleeping through (still isn't but a lot better!)

I would also have struggled with full time, I came back 1 long day and 2 short days which worked for everyone. And that was with DS being with my parents whom he adores. I think 3 months minimum too, preferably 6 or more. It's just so hard to leave your own baby!

Legally you have to assume they are taking a year then they give 8 weeks notice when they want to come back. I'm currently covering a nannies maternity leave.

Thank you all. I can see that my two concerns have come over as a bit muddled. I am worried about how long my nanny needs on maternity leave and how we will manage while she is off. That said, I am sure we will manage, somehow. The main concern at the moment is how I can talk her into taking a long enough maternity leave.

I think I have a reasonable idea about her rights in terms of length of leave and how much notice she needs to give, although the reminders are useful. However nanny is telling me that she really doesn't want a long leave. If her leave is too short it won't do any one any good at all!

I planned to take 2 weeks before EDD but baby arrived 10 days late, I returned to work full time when he was 12 weeks old (took him with me). My boss covered my mat leave (mostly in the summer) by hiring an au-pair for a few months plus family holidays & grandparents etc. I was fine returning to work at that stage but when ds reached nearly 6m I went through a period of doing dumb things like forgetting my keys etc really badly for a few weeks so maybe I was getting really knackered! It's very hard to plan cover for a nannies mat leave because anything can happen-baby can be really early or end up hospitalised for ages etc, depends how your DC are but my job couldn't just be filled with an agency temp at the last minute.