How much maternity leave should I take?

[TruffleMama]

all

First time mum-to-be here. My daughter is due early Jan 2021.

I know everyone's circumstances are different and therefore some mum's will have more/less opportunity when it comes to maternity leave... but I really would like some opinions on the amount of maternity leave I should take.

My employer offers 18 and a half weeks (4 and a half months) maternity leave on full pay. I know I am very lucky as not all new mum's get this opportunity.

I was talking to a friend yesterday who said that the 4 and half months will fly by and I will only just be getting into the swing of motherhood. She recommended 9 months maternity leave, or 6 months at least.

If I didn't go back to work after the 4 and a half months maternity leave. My income would drop to statutory maternity pay (£151 per week). I have some savings that I could use to supplement the statutory maternity pay for a little while, but the savings were originally intended to go towards buying a new house for our growing family (our one bed flat will not be big enough for me, my partner and our baby).

I'm not sure what to do. I know time is something you never get back and I don't want to miss out on spending enough time with my baby, especially when she is so young.
Should I take the 4 and a half months statutory maternity leave and then return to work (I will be going back part-time)?
Or should I take longer and use some savings to supplement my income? If yes, how long should I take?

Thanks in advance!

TruffleMama xx

I took a year with both of mine.

I got to the end of the smp period and tagged on my accrued annual leave so I had a few weeks off being paid.

I used some savings and a credit card for the time I wasn’t being paid.

Honestly, between the breastfeeding, sleep issues, hormones and not wanting to be apart, I struggled after a year. It was marginally easier the second time round as I kind of knew what to expect and I already felt happy & confident with the nursery.

@Bitchinkitchen

he will be taking his two weeks statutory paternity leave and doesn't want us to take shared leave. His reasoning is I will have spent 9 months carrying our baby, so I should take all the maternity leave to recover. I think it's quite sweet.

That's not sweet, it's a fucking cop-out. Taking care of a baby on your own for a year is not "recovery", it's exhausting and draining and often boring and miserable and thankless. Yeah, there's lots of baby cuddles and joy and love, but it will most likely be the hardest year of your life. It's not "sweet" that he wants you to do it alone, it's a dick move.

Is it possible for you to work from home? I took 3 months Mat Leave, and then we switched to Shared Parental, and my husband stayed at home with the baby while i WFH so i got the best of both worlds and got to keep breastfeeding. Then when DD was 7m we switched back and i took another 3 months.

Taking care of a baby

Oh dear @Bitchinkitchen... you've made a very wrong assumption here!

My other half is the most generous and considerate person I know. He absolutely doesn't want me to "do it alone". Far from it. He has turned to complete mush over our baby and I know he is going to be an amazing, very hands-on dad. Every second he isn't at work, he will be with me and baby, giving me a rest while he takes over. He is beyond excited about becoming a father. It's what he's always wanted, it's literally his dream come true. He just wants me to take all the time I need with baby before going back to work and he doesn't want to take any of that time away from me. He is carrying over as much A/L as possible so he can take a chunk of time off after his statutory paternity leave ends. He is not forcing the maternity leave on me, I want to take it. But if I was to suggest shared parental leave, and it was what I really wanted.. he would be happy with it. But that's not what I want. I am happy to use the maternity leave myself.

My partner is at work tonight and he just called me to see how me and bump are doing. I mentioned that I want to take longer than 4.5 months maternity leave and he was very supportive. He said he will put himself down for more overtime from now until baby arrives so we can add to the savings. He also said if he needs to get a second job, he will.

We both work for different strands of the emergency services. We have healthy banter about which service is the best! He's a firefighter, and we already joke that his full-time job is actually a part-time job (in fact, a lot of firefighters work a second job due to the amount of time they get off).
He works two day shifts (9:30am-8pm), then two night shifts (8pm-9:30am). Then he has four days off.
So when he works his two day shifts, he will be with me and baby during those two nights. When he works his two night shifts, he will be with us during those two days. Then, of course, he will be with us on his four days off.

Both of our mothers live 5 minutes walk from us, so I will never be alone. If my partner is at work, I have the option of spending that time with one our mothers if I should need some extra support.

I am not sure if I will be able to WFH. I will have to speak to my line manager / HR about it. I doubt they will allow me to fully WFH as I am a supervisor. But it's possible they may allow me to WFH one day per week/fortnight when I return to work. I'll find out. If I don't ask, I don't get! So it's worth a shot.

@TruffleMama I think you are my strand of the emergency services given we get the same amount of mat leave 😀

@Twizbe

What ever you choose, tell work you're taking the whole 52 weeks.

It's easier for everyone to cut short the leave than extend it if you find you're not ready to return after 4 months.

It also gives you a lot more flexibility to change your mind.

Don't forget you earn annual leave while on maternity leave too. You can take all this leave in one go and have a nice full pay lump sum at the end of your leave

Thanks for the tip @Twizbe!

I'm entitled to 12 months, so makes sense to tell work that I want to take 12 months. If we can manage our finances well enough so that I can take 12 months off, that'll be brilliant! But if you can't afford it, like you said, I will cut it short and have to go back to work.

[quote itisntfriday0000000000l]@TruffleMama I think you are my strand of the emergency services given we get the same amount of mat leave 😀[/quote]
You must call the LFB "water fairies" as well then!

I'm getting a call from an advisor at HR next week. They are going to be my "baby expert" and will talk me through my entitlements etc. Quite interested to see what she says. Might ask her if there's any way I can put a case together to carry over more than 40 hours A/L - I could then use this at the end of my maternity to get some paid time off. Got a feeling this request will get rejected though.

I took 4 months and it was fine for me. I didn’t spend too much time dwelling on if it was right or not as we had to do it financially. It wasn’t easy but I don’t think it would have been any easier if I’d had longer

@FightMilkTM

I THINK you will need to take the accrued leave at the end of ML, or before the baby is born. I think you have to take ML when the baby is actually born (if that makes sense), though I may be wrong.

You're right @FightMilkTM. I just looked it up and my maternity leave starts the day after baby arrives. Bugger!

My employer allows me to carry over 40 hours (5 days) leave. That's a lot less than the 22 days I've saved up!
I can request to carry over more than 40 hours leave, but usually, without exceptional circumstances, this gets rejected.

However, now thinking about it.. didn't the government say employees can carry their leave over for the next 2 years due to COVID? I'll have to look into this. An advisor from HR is calling me next year to discuss my entitlements etc, so I will certainly ask about this.

I would absolutely take 9-12 months. You will manage in a 1 br until then. But the time you had off to rest and recover is really invaluable. I was ready to go back by 9-12 months, but I don't know how people manage it by 3-4 months (and I only qualified for maternity allowance each time due to being self-employed, so never even had the 4 months of full pay - that's pretty amazing actually!).

@TruffleMama we do indeed!

It’s a shame the way the annual leave year falls as to when you are due, I think HR might let you carry over, as they did here for one of my colleagues, I can’t recall how much though - but all depends on the area though.

I would check with HR as well if you can take A/L at the beginning of your mat leave as as far as I am aware the moment baby comes occupational mat leave kicks in.

Do they run maternity seminars in your area? They happen 2/3 times a year here and are very informative.

You will have a few bank holidays that will fall in your maternity leave too.....you can also ask to latch them onto the back of your maternity leave as well. There would be at least 4 I think ( Easter and may?)

I fell foul in my first pregnancy of putting annual leave days in here and there when I was on statutory maternity, I got paid a lot less then I expected one month, pay section did explain it me after but it’s basically the offsetting of stat mat and annual leave. Essentially you are better off taking it as a chunk of leave at the very end, rather than during the stat mat period here and there.

People getting defensive about those who are advocating taking as long as possible need to remember the point of the thread was to get people's opinions. Of course there are some people more than happy to go back to work earlier and if that's what is right for your family then fabulous; that's your opinion from your perspective and we'll worth the OP taking note.there there are others, like myself, who want as much time as we can get with our baby during leave. Not because that's the right thing to do period but because it's the right thing to do for us. Stop getting so defensive.

I haven't noticed anyone being particularly defensive, just sharing different experiences.

I'm on my third baby who is 5 months old. No way could I go back to work right now. He barely sleeps and he is still so dependent on me. As this will be your first, you'll only just be settling into being a parent. I'd definitely take as much time as you can.

I took 6 months with DD and 8 months with DS. I was delighted to go back to work both times around. If shared parental leave had been a thing back then, then I’d have probably gone back earlier and let DH do some of the hard grind. I hated being stuck at home with a baby. Hated it. I like my children much more now that they are older. Teenagers are just amazing.

By the way, I don't have to go back to work. I don't need to. But even though I love my job and hated being a sahm when my other two were little, there's still no way I could go back right now. Just my personal opinion/circumstances.

[quote itisntfriday0000000000l]@TruffleMama we do indeed!

It’s a shame the way the annual leave year falls as to when you are due, I think HR might let you carry over, as they did here for one of my colleagues, I can’t recall how much though - but all depends on the area though.

I would check with HR as well if you can take A/L at the beginning of your mat leave as as far as I am aware the moment baby comes occupational mat leave kicks in.

Do they run maternity seminars in your area? They happen 2/3 times a year here and are very informative.

You will have a few bank holidays that will fall in your maternity leave too.....you can also ask to latch them onto the back of your maternity leave as well. There would be at least 4 I think ( Easter and may?)

I fell foul in my first pregnancy of putting annual leave days in here and there when I was on statutory maternity, I got paid a lot less then I expected one month, pay section did explain it me after but it’s basically the offsetting of stat mat and annual leave. Essentially you are better off taking it as a chunk of leave at the very end, rather than during the stat mat period here and there.[/quote]
Thanks @itisntfriday0000000000l

Yep, the way our A/L year falls really hasn't done me any favours. I will certainly try and carry over more than the 40 hours A/L. I've been shielding during pregnancy and I'm WFH. Basically, I haven't been going anywhere, so I've had no need to use A/L. I don't think I should be forced to take it before 31st March if it will actually be of use to me at the end of my maternity leave. Not sure HR can make a decision on allowing me to carry over more than 40 hours.. I think it's the decision of one of the SLT? I will ask HR when I speak to them.

There's so much I'm not aware of. I didn't know you can claim back the BHs and didn't realise the impact of taking A/L during SMP. Thanks for the heads up, I'll definitely add all A/L on to the end of the SMP in a big chunk.

As I've been reading through all the responses on this thread, I've been jotting down questions to ask the HR advisor when she calls me next week. I'll probably take up her entire afternoon!

I went back at 6 months because I was on a fixed-term contract and if I didn't go back for three months after mat leave I had to pay back all my occupational maternity pay. It was fine - it definitely didn't 'break' me, or DS for that matter! - though it was a lot easier because DH then had three months shared leave so when I went back in was leaving DS with him, not in childcare. It was fine and I don't regret it as such but I'm pregnant again and I am planning to have longer (9 months) this time.

My employer allows me to carry over 40 hours (5 days) leave. That's a lot less than the 22 days I've saved up!
I can request to carry over more than 40 hours leave, but usually, without exceptional circumstances, this gets rejected.

In normal circumstances my employer only allows 5 days to be carried into the next year, but they have completely different rules where pregnancy is involved, so do ask the HR person. For me, the leave year began in January and their guideline was that you should try to have taken off at least a proportionate amount by the time of year you went on maternity leave - so, I went off around the beginning of April, meaning I needed to have taken roughly 1/4 of my leave allowance by then (in fact, I just tacked two weeks on before my official maternity leave started, so I stopped working at 37 weeks and technically went on maternity leave at 39). So, I have a big chunk carried which will go on at the end of my official maternity leave but before going back. In my planning, I basically dropped part of the unpaid time and replaced it with my leftover paid annual leave.

It would be really unfair if they didn't allow pregnant women to carry leave, because depending on when you were due in relation to when the leave year starts, you might not have been able to take it!

It's worth also thinking about KIT days - you can do up to 10 and get paid for these. You don't actually have to work the whole day, either! My work basically delay your physical return to work by one day for each KIT day, but start your pay back up at the date you would have been back if you hadn't done them, if that makes sense. So again, I've been able to stretch out how long I'm taking off without having to take too much of the unpaid bit. My two KIT days so far have just been doing an online meeting for a couple of hours, which was manageable enough!

You don't have to decide now. Like pp said, tell work you are taking the full year - you have to inform them in writing of your return date anyway, no matter what you said initially.

We did shared leave and I went back at 13 weeks (3 months) with no regrets. I hated Mat leave and had severe PND so going back to work pretty much saved my sanity. It was also lovely for DH to have the same opportunity for establishing a relationship with the baby. It set us up for proper equality in parenting.

Just to say I took 6 months and practically skipped back to work (full time) after that. DH then took shared leave for 3m. I’m thinking of taking less at the beginning next time then maybe having another chunk of leave when baby’s older, but not sure I can sell that split leave to work.

My two were both due on the 31st Jan and our holiday leave runs jan to Dec.

I wasn't able to carry over any leave either. I had about 3 weeks leave to use before the end of the year.

I used it all in December and over Christmas. I took jan 1st as a normal bank holiday. I then 'wfh' for 2weeks and started my maternity leave 2 weeks before my due date.

I’ve used savings (£10k) and accrued annual leave to take 14 months in total and it’s still not enough. I don’t know anyone who has only taken the paid part. The minimum has always been 6-9 months and usually the full year. It’s definitely the norm to use savings. I’m the main earner so it’s been brutal for us.
At 4.5 months I was still exhausted and would not have been able to work at all.

Take as much as you can including accrued holiday.

We get a similar full pay amount, 19 weeks.

I took 19 weeks full pay, 20 weeks at SSP then 11 weeks holiday pay, a combination of the current holiday year and carried over from the previous year. 11 months off in total.

I was lucky though, I only needed a minimal top up from savings to afford to do that, which I’d managed to save between babies, despite paying (half) for nursery. It helped DC1 was in a staff nursery, and work covered the cost of their fees. Fees are taken from wages as salary sacrifice. During this period I received 100% of my SSP. (For the final unpaid portion you had to pay nursery yourself).

OP I think the best advice is to wait and see how you get on - you don't need to make as decision now.

Having a baby is life changing and you will be in a very different place by the time your little girl is 4 months old.

Don't waste your emotional energies trying to decide just yet.

I went back at 7 months with my first as I was incorrectly told by HR that was all I could take (am not in Uk). This time round I’m taking almost 12 months. I get 18 weeks full pay then have around 7 weeks holiday (carried over and accrued) to use which tagging on. Rest will be unpaid.

For us, we decided this would work. Partners wage will thankfully cover everything including nursery for DS1 whilst I’m on the unpaid part but we will have to watch our usual spending a little during that time if we don’t want to use savings.

We are sort of saving now towards it and as I’ll be paid until end March will continue to do so until stop getting paid. Plus we normally get bonuses in Feb and May (though god knows if we will next year given Covid!) so if that happens that will also help.

It is such a personal decision based on so many factors but if you can eeek it out a bit I’d recommend it as I felt going back at 7 months was too early for me (and he went to MIL rather than nursery).

Good luck whatever you decide! x

@Boomclaps
This is bonkers. Lots of families would end up homeless or unable to eat if they applied that logic.

I think that's a bit far fetched, I ended up on unpaid maternity leave and a single parent with 2 kids and I still wasn't homeless or unable to eat.