Is it possible to go back on to Maternity Leave .... it's not is it? Oh poo

[talktothebees]

finished ML on Monday. Today DP tells me he would have been happy for me to take 9 months rather than the 6 I've taken. REALLY wish we'd had this conversation last week .

It's not too bad as I'm on gardening leave (home on full pay - yippee) for 3 months but could have defered that for another 3 months and had a whole lovely year at home with DD.

I'm hoping one of you marvellous HR experts can deliver me a miracle here.

I have to give DP the laptop back for a while but any advice would be greatly appreciated. Even the 'FGS talk to your DP more often ' variety of advice which I richly deserve.

Silly silly bees.

You can change your mind re: your return date whilst on mat leave, but you may have left it too late if your ml has now officially finished, but ring your personnel dept and check, they may be kind and change your paperwork from a,l to ml.

it's a bank - they don;t do kind

How on earth did you swing 3 mths leave on full pay?

Gardening leave usually means you've been sacked and you're working the last 3 months but by staying at home. Do you mean something different here?

Do ask whoever your HR contact is, if its literally only been days since you finished maternity leave and started this paid leave you never know although as 3 months paid leave is very generous anyway it would be incredibly generous to defer it as well.

How come you have been given 3 months off paid anyway? That's very generous and unusual- as Xenia says gardening leave is usually when you are leaving an organisation and they don't want you to be in the office for the rest of your notice, or similar. I am assuming you are going back to work though?

ta for your answers ladies. Don;t know why they're so generous but dozens of us had our posts disappear on us and we all got the three months on full pay at home deal. They actually call it displacement leave rather then maternity leave. The idea is they're giving you a chance to apply for other jobs with them. I've decided we couldn't afford any more time for me on maternity allowance only anyway.

So on with job hunting which ranks somewhere below cleaning the toilet on my list of favourite things to do