Maternity Allowance Question

[blacktreacles]

Hello, wonder if anyone can help, will try to keep brief.

I am self employed, work solo but director of my ltd company, no other employees, work from home in a sort of graphic design q
type job.

I’ll send if my application for Maternity Allowance at 26 weeks, not to be confused with stat maternity pay as I don’t qualify for that being self employed.

Online is says payment will start 11 weeks before due date. I’ll still be working 11 weeks before due date and probably won’t stop until 3 weeks before, on the assumption I’m not early. What happens here?
Assuming it’s not allowed to receive the allowance when I am still earning. Can I choose to postpone the date the payment starts?

Ideally I’d like to save all KIT until after I give birth, as I will be starting work again gradually.

I'm sure my MA only kicked in after I stopped work, I think 11 weeks before is just the earliest you can claim

Or the earliest you can start payments, I mean

Yeah that’s what I was thinking. Can you remember if you just state on the form when you’d like the payments to kick in?