Advice for UK maternity/shared parental leave

[Orto]

I'm thinking ahead to possible baby number two...

I returned to work after 8 months with my first baby. This broke me in every way imaginable and I'm desperate to take a full year with number 2 (assuming that we have a second). For context, I had hyperemesis (which I will likely have again) which meant pregnancy and recovery were bleak.

There is no way my other half will (nor should he have to) sacrifice having some time with the baby to allow me to take the full year of maternity. I'm thus wondering if there are any work arounds that would enable me to take a year and for him to take say, 4 months or so? Or are we just looking at him having to take extended unpaid leave? I'm less concerned about the financial toll (though obviously this will be an issue) and more with the viability of the arrangement.

Thanks for your advice!

For shared parental leave you'd need to end your maternity leave early to free up time for him to take. He could take unpaid parental leave. He would be entitled to 18 weeks leave per child up to age 18 with a limit of 4 weeks per child per year depending on employer.

i am just back at work following maternity leave with my baby. i took a year off work but technically only 10 months of maternity leave as the last 2 months were all the annual leave i had accrued over the year (including bank holidays etc). i chose to take that within the year off and get paid for those two months (10+2) rather than adding the annual leave onto my 12 months of maternity leave (12+2) (if that makes sense).

as i understand it that means that if my partner had wanted to, he could have taken 2 months of shared parental leave as i only 'used up' 10 months of my 12 month leave entitlement. in actuality we didn't do that as he is pretty senior in his role and it's hard to cover him/he would have ended up more stressed. he would also have had to take it as unpaid because we would have taken it off the end of my mat leave and that's the part which you don't get any pay for (i.e. i would have been 'giving him' two of my unpaid months), so i'm not sure there's really any difference between taking 'extended unpaid leave' as you mentioned above and taking shared parental leave in this way - you can't both be paid for being on leave at the same time (even though you can take the leave at the same time) - you still only have 9 months or whatever it is of statutory maternity pay for one person to claim - it's more that it can be a way for someone to get a longer period of parental leave even where their employer might not usually extend that right. but they wouldn't necessarily be paid for it, that would be up to their employer's parental leave policy to determine.

idk if that makes any sense but essentially yeah, if you add your annual leave onto your mat leave that can give you a couple of extra months to play around with at least in theory. the pay thing is a separate issue and will probably depend on his employer as policies tend to be very different but usually if someone has good paternity pay then they will have that regardless of SPL (i.e. they might let him take extra leave regardless).