To NOT take maternity leave.. WWYD?

[Mol5]

Bare with me..

I work from home 24/7 but I am not self-employed.
I work for a USA based company and I have a home office in the UK.
I am an employee and would qualify for mat pay from the company if I chose it but I am the high earner in our household and we would be really effected by the reduction/loss of my wage.

So I am debating whether or not I need to actually take maternity leave. Obviously I am expecting to have a few weeks scheduled off work but no more than maybe 4-6 weeks then return to work 'full time', from my at home office.

Instead I've suggested my husband to take shared parental leave and give him the chance to be at home with me and DC1 for the first few months.

I've mentioned this to a couple of friends and family and they seem to be mortified at the idea, but I don't really see a negative difference to me being at home not working on mat pay, or me being at home with a laptop open answering emails intermittently and getting paid a full wage..

This will be our first baby so I guess I might be being very naive in what I will need to do.

WWYD? Any advice?

Thanks!

OP I know several people who have done it that way and lived to tell the tale, and do the same next time. So don't lose hope!
I'd say make it 6-8 weeks off rather than 4-6 though, the first 6 weeks can be very tipsy turvy, and you may find it hard to work right up to the end of the pregnancy.

Re breastfeeding, you can email and breastfeed! I've done that- but I do find my brain goes a bit mushy when feeding so I'm better at taking a call or being in a meeting than writing- harder for the mind to wander...

Obviously if anyone has health issues you may need to rethink, and I'm assuming you have chosen a partner who is a competent and functional member of your household, so can be assumed to know how to do laundry and comfort his child

DH has no concerns about my ability to do the housework/comfort my child etc while he works from home and Im the stay at home parent, and I’d have no concerns about doing it the other way round, as he is also a competent adult.

Gabby I agree that it is of course doable, and lots of women do harder things in terms of returning to work after a baby. The question isn't whether it's possible but whether it's what the OP wants to do.

If she was considering either this or going back to an office at 6 weeks then everyone would say take this option without a doubt, I think. It's the fact she thinks that it will be essentially the same as being on maternity leave that's giving people pause.

Well it's doable but bloody tough going. What happens if you have a c section? Or if the baby is colicky and cries all the time and only the breast will settle them?

I'd think of a plan B and hope you don't need to use it.
I had my own business and returned after 6 weeks (and a c section). No decent support either. My first baby was a poppet and hardly cried during working hours (evenings she made up for it). I think the hardest part of all was being dressed and at my desk in work mode raring to go after sleepless nights. Commute or no commute! I should add that my second baby was very hard work, colicky and very strong minded and it was so difficult with her screaming her head off and trying to have a conversation with a client.

Having said that, once they were settled and in a routine it worked well. When they were crawling about and a danger to themselves (about 10-11 months for mine) I put them into a nursery for the morning and then they'd sleep in the afternoons.

See how you go!

But her DH is going to be at home doing the child care?

Sounds like a great plan! I would have loved to have don't this but we missed out on shared parental leave. Your DH will need to be primary carer - you both need to treat it as though you were out of the house at work. You'll also need to put the child in childcare once his parental leave is up - but that only what the majority of women do anyway.

Good luck!

I couldn't have done it with no 1. Dc as for the first 6 months of his life he had colic and I got zero sleep, so while he slept in the day, I slept.

Dc2 was a Velcro baby, so once again I found it hard. She didn't want to be held my dp at all.

In he early stage both babies put strain on our relationship as we were both exhausted and had no outside support.
I think it's fine going in with your plan, but don't beat yourself up if reality is different.

I will say that I think if it's what you want to do it will be made immeasurably easier if you either FF or mix feed, so that DH can do most of the night. I gave up breastfeeding when I went back to work because I just couldn't take being the only one who could do the night stuff and the one who worked and so who couldn't have naps in the day etc. Obviously you may either get a better sleeper or just be made of sterner stuff, though!

In theory it sounds a perfectly sensible idea.

The only thing is that once you have given birth you might feel very differently.
You don’t know what sort of birth you will have.

Also babies don’t sleep through and even if you handed the whole lot of night time duties over to the df the shear exhaustion would mean you might have step in to relieve him sometimes.

I did it on my own and at one point I couldn’t walk straight because the world was tilting and my 2 were some of the earliest babies to sleep through the night in the NCT group I belonged to.

Also babies don’t sleep through and even if you handed the whole lot of night time duties over to the df the shear exhaustion would mean you might have step in to relieve him sometimes.

I mean, A LOT of fathers don't get up in the night at all because they work and the mother doesn't...

Also babies don’t sleep through and even if you handed the whole lot of night time duties over to the df the shear exhaustion would mean you might have step in to relieve him sometimes

Just as DH, who works full time from home, steps in to relieve me at night tones when the exhaustion is too much. As I believe most decent partners do, despite working from home.

*night times

OP my baby started sleeping 6-7 hours at 8 weeks however she at 12 weeks she was back at sleeping for 3 hours for another 4 weeks. Oh and I went back to work at 19 weeks.

The OP has already said her DH will take time off to mind the baby - wHat kind of low opinions do you have of men if you think they cannot mind their own baby - and cope with night feeds as every woman on maternity leave does - while their wife works????? How are women ever going to have high value careers if we encourage men to believe they cannot be the main cater for their baby??????

Carer

Annasgirl it depends how you want to feed. I breastfed so my husband physically couldn't have been the main carer for my newborns.

The OP has already said her DH will take time off to mind the baby - wHat kind of low opinions do you have of men if you think they cannot mind their own baby
But OP doesn't want him to be the primary carer. She wants to be there 24/7 and not miss anything. DH is there to hold the baby when she needs too hands to type or quiet for a phone call, which she a ta like will be intermittently throughout the day. She can't do her job properly and have the baby full time bat passing him over for nappy changes and quick cuddles with Dad without something giving.