Not sure if I'm worrying about nothing here. I've been on maternity leave since the summer and I'm due to return in the spring. My boss asked me for a specific return date before I went on leave as she needed to arrange cover. The agreed upon return date was about 8 months after it started, and about 5 weeks before SMP would stop.
At the time I thought this sounded like a good time to return, but now I'm starting to wonder if I would rather take the whole 39 weeks of paid leave, or even just 4 weeks more than originally planned. I will be returning to some other self employed work that I do at the same time, plus older DC starting nursery on that date as well, I'm now thinking it might all be a bit much at once and perhaps I should try to stagger things a little.
I'm aware I need to give 8 weeks notice to change the return date, but is this something my boss might be annoyed about? I get the impression that arranging my cover has been a bit tricky as it's not all been done by one person, so she might be a bit dismayed at having to arrange a further month of cover! However 8 weeks should be ample time to arrange it, in fact I'd probably give them more notice than that anyway.
Basically aibu at all to consider changing the return date? My mat leave with DC1 followed lockdown so I was very ready to return after 3 months, this time around feels different!