Baby in writeup year

[Ephiny]

Am I crazy to think this could work? I'm 29 with a partner but no children yet (though we both want to) and starting a full-time MRes+PhD this autumn, 4 years fully funded.

But obviously thinking about when I'll be able to have a baby. After the PhD I might be spending a good few years doing fixed term post-docs, which won't be a great time for it, so it seems to me the best time might be towards the end of the PhD itself. I would get 'maternity leave', i.e. I could take 4 months off with stipend payments continuing (and then extended for the appropriate period at the end). And even when the leave is over, I should be writing up, so while I'll be working hard, I'll be able to be quite flexible with my hours, plus there's a subsidised university nursery.

Please tell me if this sounds a ridiculous or impractical idea, or if any of you have had similar experiences...

(sorry I see there was already a thread on TTC during PhD, any additional comments still welcome though )

I think you'd find it really really hard tbh. It was my major push for finishing my write up when i got pg with ds1. I was doing a fixed term post doc at the time anyway and had more children whilst on fixed term contracts. Youy may have to play it a bit carefully over the dates, but often you can roll over continuous employment terms from one contract (and uni) to the next.
I've done lots of different things over the years, but writing up my PhD was right up there in terms of how hard it is, what a long grind it appears to become and how hard you have to work. I was often still writing at 3 am, having put in a full day in the lab. Even if you didn't have the lab bit ie were purely writing up I think you might be underestimating how much time new babies take up, how tired they make you and how hard it may (will?) be to get extended periods of time to concentrate eg you might be thinking feed and change baby, and pop into cot and baby sleeps for an age, but all too often they are awake again in seconds/minutes or won't settle.

Yes I probably am hugely underestimating how hard the whole pregnancy/birth/parenting thing is going to be, but I definitely want to do it at some point, preferably before I get too far into my 30s. Maybe earlier in the PhD would be better (in which case we probably need to start trying pretty soon ), I worry a bit about how that would look to my supervisors, though one is a woman who put her research on hold to have a baby herself last year, so hopefully she'd be understanding!

Of course ideally we would have got our act together and done this while I still had a well-paid job with 12-months mat leave, but there was always some personal/practical reason to put it off, now I feel maybe I need to just go for it or end up leaving it until it's too late...