Self employed - how long was your maternity leave?

[batsforlashes]

Hi,

expecting dc3 and currently working working for myself
Doing project work for one company. The company have asked will I come back in a more structured fashion after I have the baby. Now this is all a hood thing as I can more or less work from home and be pretty much flexible with my hours which are about 2-3 days a week. the only catch is I think they are going to
Need me asap and I could prob stretch to. 3 months leave. Look it really a no brained it's just I was still wrecked 3 months after having my last two and also worrying the new baby will lose out.

Anyone had to go back to work earlyish and how
Did you cope??

Thanks

B x

Apologies for brutal spelling !

Hello - I have had dc3 four months ago. I do a mixture of employed (two days) and am setting up a business with friends. Am not due back at job until end Jan but am doing small bits and pieces for my business and it is tough. My advice is to decide what is right for you and the baby. If you can afford it, I would suggest take as much time as you want to before going back. If the company values you they will wait until the time is right for you. The other thing you could try is going back in a staggered way - start off by doing a few hours a week then building it up to the 2-3days over several months.

I have found I want more time off than I thought I did and I am struggling to hold my boundaries with my business partners. I do bits and pieces in the evenings mainly when everyone is asleep. My feeling is: I am only going to get this time once and it;s precious and every one else can wait.

After DC no 2 I got state maternity pay - which is diddly squat - so I made sure no bills were raised in that time but I was in fact doing bits and pieces from when he was three days old!

Breastfeeding while marking exams was fun. I never explained to the students what the stains on their scripts were....

I went back after 4 months after having DC3 - didn't mean to but a good project came my way and as I work from home, I did it around baby's naps and at weekends etc. DD1 was at school and I upped DD2's hours at nursery to 3-4 mornings a week. It was fine, I found it ok as DC3 was so young, he slept a lot. I find it much harder working from home now he's nearly two.

It helped that I have a very very undemanding client and no meetings/phone calls etc - it probably depends a lot on the nature of yoru work.

I went back to work about 10 weeks after dd1 was born and 12 weeks after dd2 - we had a nanny so I could still bf etc as I worked mainly from home. With dd1 it was fine as she was a good sleeper, with dd2 who wasn't, it was, frankly, miserable for quite a while. However, I got through it - I had to or my work would have died out forever. good luck.