Going back to self-employment after the birth

[musomum]

I know it might seem like a silly question but what is the earliest practical time to go back to work after having a baby? Weeks, months? I am self-employed musician working odd hours here and there. Am anxious that I will lose a lot of my work if I have too long off. I would not need to work many hours to keep it ticking over. I have a good support network and child care is not an issue - just the practicalities of keeping body and soul together!

i went back to work as a childminder when DD was 10 weeks old and to be honest i think it was too soon, she wasnt sleeping through every night and my body was all mucked up from hormones etc but then my job is quite demanding especially with 2 x 2 year olds to look after as well as a 10 week old baby!

I went back after four months with both of mine.

Think it will depend entirely on how the birth goes and how you feel after. If you feel ok, happy about leaving them and its only for a few hours at a time I would say you be fine after a couple of weeks. But things never seem to go as you plan them .....my DS was prem C/section and he was in hospital for 2 weeks and luckily working was the last thing on my mind! GOOD LUCK - hope it all goes well for you x

i did some paid work quite early after each birth. if you have a fairly simple birth and reasonably easy baby it's not too hard. but it's hard to tell for sure til you've had them, if you get a good sleeper you'll feel about 1000 times more lively than if you get a wakeful one.

As long as all has gone well, I agree with yakkityyak that you could go back after a couple of weeks. I gather that employed people cannot work the first two weeks after the birth)
It's pretty hard work, and support is the key.

I did some work, an hour here and there, pretty soon after DD1&2 (and I mean within the first two weeks, but just emails and phone calls from home), but both were sleeping through from 6 weeks. It made getting back at 8 weeks really easy, and people barely remembered that I had left.
I also attended a post grad course weekend (Fri-Sun) module at 4 weeks-brought hubby who handed me baby when she needed feeding, which I did discretely at the back of the class. I would have graduated a year after my class had I misssed it.

Breastfeeding was quite a juggle, but can be managed with pumps and reliable storage. I started giving bottles of expressed milk at 6 weeks, which was fine. Sometimes I had to pour it away, but I froze as much as I could as early as possible!

I really appreciated the adult contact when out, but then I am not a tiny baby person.

One note of warning-I had no end of unpleasant and insensitive comments from people who couldn't understand why I would do this, and were busy judging me.

This time around, I will take 8 weeks, and use annual leave to work part-time for the first month back. The first couple of months are hell anyway

For anything major (work-wise) I would say 3 months, but if you can be flexible and do odd bits here and there, then probably sooner. As others have said, it depends largely on how straigtforward the birth is, and how much your baby sleeps!

I have friends (also musicians) who have worked a bit straight away - in the week or two after giving birth, it just depends on the job really. Maybe you could say to people that you're planning to take a couple of months off, and then take on short projects/local dates so they keep asking you, and then make decisions on a case by case basis. Much better to plan to take a bit of time off, than to accept work and in the end have to pull out of it because it's too soon!

Good luck.