using up holiday before return

[Itscurtainsforyou]

I'm due to return to work when my 12 months mat leave is over. My baby was born very premature, was in hospital for 7 months so I've had less one-to-one time with him than I might have had with a full termer.

I told work that I'd be taking the full 12 months mat leave plus holiday (that I thought would be around 4 weeks) straight after.

I've been adding up the annual leave I accrued and carried over from last year (didn't use it as baby was early), plus the leave I will have accrued for this year and, even if I carry over the maximum amount to next year and allow some leave for over the Christmas period, i have 8-9 weeks leave to use up, rather than the 4 I originally thought.

To me this is a bonus, I'll have two months after mat leave where I will get full pay, but can spend this time with my baby. However I'm now a bit concerned that work may not be happy with me delaying my back-in-office date by 4-5 weeks.

Can they legally tell me that I can't use my leave this way? What I don't want is to be paid for the time rather than have the time off. In reality there would only be 6 weeks between my proposed back-in-office date and Christmas, so there's not a great deal to be gained from making me take it at the end of the year instead of straight after mat leave. I also don't want to finish mat leave early as I want to maximise my time at home.

Anyone any experience of similar circumstances?

Yes they can request that you don't take the annual leave then

Annual leave is a work entitlement but your employer has to approve when it can be taken

All you can do is speak to them about it and see what they say

What childcare are you using?

If you are using a nursery or childminder setting I would try and roll as much leave as possible forwards into the next year, as my experience is that the first few months/winter (especially with an ex-premmie, as my two were) is bug after cough after infection after bug and you will need either a very flexible boss, a partner who can do more than their fair share, or a LOT of spare leave to cover illness.

For the days you can't carry, could you see if they'd let you take 1 or 2 days a week as leave to start you off? That will help your pay packet but give you a gentle ease in to start with?

We're probably going to use a nursery, so are anticipating an infection onslaught!

I'm pretty sure we're not allowed to carry forward more than a week of annual leave into the next year, unfortunately. I'm dreading him being poorly enough to be off sick/in hospital, but I'm guessing I'll have to face it at some point.

So if they make me take my annual leave by the end of the year, that's 10-11 weeks leave (once I've carried over a week) I'll need to take between beginning of September and end December (a 17 week period). To me, it's better for me to tag the whole lot onto the end of my maternity, than to go back to work for 6 weeks only to go on leave again for the rest of the year.

I really don't want to be taking a week here and there (unless I have to because of sickness etc) as I'll be paying for childcare once I'm back at work. Also, my line of work is a bit all-or-nothing, so I'm not sure working fewer days to ease back in would work either.

I don't know if I'm being unreasonable to ask to tag it all on to the end of mat leave or not!