Going back after maternity leave, already pregnant again - please advise!

[porcupine11]

In three weeks I'm due back at work after a year's maternity leave, and I'll be 8 weeks' pregnant. I'd love to hear what other women have done in this situation. My worries are:

• Should I take childcare vouchers? I know some workplaces might stop giving them anyway once you switch to statutory pay. Can I ask HR about this in confidence, or are they obliged to tell my boss if I'm pregnant?

• When should I tell my boss I'm pregnant? Straight away so she can secure the services of my maternity cover again, or after 12 week scan, or wait a bit longer so my pay review is not affected?

• And re pay review, I got rather stung when I was off on maternity leave. Has anyone asked for a better salary increase than offered, when the company knows you are pregnant? I really feel I am worth extra, but I know I'll only be working for a matter of months and am lucky to have been given part time working, so how much can I expect from the company?

• What do you think of women who have several maternity leaves in succession? Will my colleagues resent me?

Thank you for any advice!

first congratulations!
This happened to me in a teaching job, I can't say I was especially popular but it was dealt with professionally. I am fairly sure my child care vouchers continued as before. I can't really help with the pay issues as that wasn't relevent to me. In the end I took my maternity leave, worked my notice and then left. This worked for me as it was my 3rd child and coincided with the first starting school part time, so i was able to avoid child care issues I would have had by staying at home. No 3 is just starting school so time to look for another job!

I would definitely wait until your 12 week scan before telling your boss

If it is safe to do your job as it is then you could wait until the 12 week scan. But if your job is risky then your boss will need to know in order to do a risk asessment.

If all goes well I will be going back at about 30 weeks pregnant! Just enough time to take all my acrued leave before maternity leave starts again!

By law, companies now have to pay childcare vouchers through ML if you get them normally within your salary.

Me too! I did not find out until v recently and already near the end of my time at work! I think you have to be claiming by 25 weeks? Or whenever they take your salary and other perks from to calculate pay. But it would not have been much I claimed as DD is now 3 so I shan't kick myself too much!

I am not sure when it changed, but it changed quite recently so that ALL benefits received as a paid employee continue while on OML and AML, but they are not allowed to deduct any money from statutory maternity leave which means they pay your vouchers, but cannot take the money back (also means you accrue bank holidays while on leave I beleive, i know i do). Flowerbeanbag, she is the one you need to explain it better than I can, twas her who told me!

IME, HR are not required to inform your boss - they will probably recommend that you do, but it is not a requirement until further on. It can be very difficult to have your job risk-assessed without your boss knowing why......

Thanks for all the replies, it is very interesting about the vouchers. I think I will go and ask HR about that, and if they want me to tell my boss early then so be it.

We're such a small team within such a casual company that they don't bother with things like risk assessments. I'd rather be in a bigger company where my leave would be less noticeable. I can't help feeling too guilty about being off to look into things like claiming bank holidays back.