Perfect Maternity for you?

nan199678

Another mom talked about this today & got me thinking. What would be your ideal, perfect maternity leave?

I do daycare from home & have already scaled back my kids to just one. My plan has been to only take 2 weeks off before taking care of the other little girl part time again. With it being around the holidays it will not be full time until more like 4-5 weeks after.

I have a 2yo girl now & am expecting my new princess end of Nov. My dream maternity leave would be an easy baby like my first & my 2yo loving her & dealing w the transition well. My husband actually being able to spend time w us. A lot of lazy cuddling & even some delicious holiday food. Preparing for Christmas, which I'm hoping to be finished shopping for before baby comes. Pretty simple but I've been daydreaming about snuggling under the covers all of us together. Then spending family time for the holidays. I'm actually really excited. :-)

ldrosophila

Sigh...sounds wonderful!

Right now all I want is to carry to term, have a healthy baby, and some security.

lisapr123

Ideally, a healthy happy baby who isn't too cranky


We have a due date of 12-6. My husband is taking 2+ weeks off, so if the baby comes around the due date he'll go back to work on 12/23....just in time for Christmas & New Years. So his first 2 weeks back at work will be 3 day work weeks during a slow time for him at work, so he can leave whenever or work from home or whatever. Lots of flexibility there. I'm hoping we can spend Christmas with the relatives (but there are 35 of us so if there is a lot of sickness going on we may have to skip out.)

I'm hoping to see my mom quite a bit, my mother-in-law not so much. Also hoping we're up to visits from friends and family. I'm thankful most of our loved ones are around here so we don't have anyone that we need to "entertain".

I work part time and am intending to take at least the rest of the school year off. So the earliest I'll return is late August. I do, however, hope to either volunteer or work one or two nights a week so my husband has some alone time with the baby. We'll see....

jenluvsushi

Well I am lucky that I get 12 weeks of FMLA and then I can burn as much time as I have on the books. I also have the ability to have my husband donate time off to me being that we both work for the same entity. Still, if I could have the dream maternity leave, I would be able to leave work a month before I am due (which is a possibility anyway due to medical issues that I have) and not come back until the next year......as it stands now, I will be coming back full time when my baby is around 6 months old. Working part time isn’t an option for the type of work I do.

momRN2B

as a college student, i dont get any maternity leave. With my last one I was lucky to give birth right before spring break so i didnt miss much class. I was back in school full time at 3 weeks postpartum. This one is due a week before the spring semester starts so i may have to go back to school even sooner. It would be nice to have 6 weeks off but not gonna happen.

lisapr123

as a college student, i dont get any maternity leave. With my last one I was lucky to give birth right before spring break so i didnt miss much class. I was back in school full time at 3 weeks postpartum. This one is due a week before the spring semester starts so i may have to go back to school even sooner. It would be nice to have 6 weeks off but not gonna happen.

Kudos to you for your commitment!! When my husband was in grad school one of his classmates had her baby. If they missed any classes they were dropped from the program (it was a one year program so very intense, and very expensive). So her husband came to the Tuesday night class while she was in the hospital and she returned to class on Thursday night. To this day, I have so much respect for her!!!

ContraryMaryMary

I'm very happy with how things have worked out for me. I finished work only a week before bubs No.1 arrived (ideally it would have been two but she was 5 days early) but arrive she did and was a good eater and sleeper from day one. I started picking up a bit of freelance work when she was a few months old and have built that up to about a day or so a week. However, I work from home so fit it around her sleeps.

All I hope is that when No.2 arrives at the end of January she's as well behaved as the first.

As they get older and start pre-school and then primary/elementary I will increase my work levels up to about 20-25 hours a week. I would prefer not to return to full time work (or office based) until they've finished school and are off to university (only 18.5 years away!)

Rubyayn

In a perfect world the US would have an actual maternity leave policy. We are one of the only industrialized nations without one. You are lucky if you are covered under FMLA, some people only get disability or nothing at all depending on how big the company they work for is. My personal perfect world would be 12-18 months of job protection with some pay, like they have in Canada and most European countries. We fall very short in this area, in my opinion. At the bare minimum I think you should get six months off as that is how long babies exclusively breastfeed without supplementing solids.

I had 11 weeks after my daughter and am taking an extended leave of absense (unpaid) this time, so I will have a total of 16 weeks off, then I will come back at 30 hours per week. I plan on literally working until my contractions are three minutes apart so that all of that time is spent with the new baby. I am extremely lucky that this is available to me. We can swing it financially, but it will not be easy as only six weeks of that time will be paid at all and only at 60%.

This is a soapbox issue of mine. The lack of maternity leave and baby friendly policies demonstrates our nations priorities. We can do better for families, that's for sure.

cnlargent

In a perfect world the US would have an actual maternity leave policy. We are one of the only industrialized nations without one. You are lucky if you are covered under FMLA, some people only get disability or nothing at all depending on how big the company they work for is. My personal perfect world would be 12-18 months of job protection with some pay, like they have in Canada and most European countries. We fall very short in this area, in my opinion. At the bare minimum I think you should get six months off as that is how long babies exclusively breastfeed without supplementing solids.

I had 11 weeks after my daughter and am taking an extended leave of absense (unpaid) this time, so I will have a total of 16 weeks off, then I will come back at 30 hours per week. I plan on literally working until my contractions are three minutes apart so that all of that time is spent with the new baby. I am extremely lucky that this is available to me. We can swing it financially, but it will not be easy as only six weeks of that time will be paid at all and only at 60%.

This is a soapbox issue of mine. The lack of maternity leave and baby friendly policies demonstrates our nations priorities. We can do better for families, that's for sure.

You could be my best friend on this topic. I have FMLA. I am taking 12 weeks at 60% on STD, I also plan to work up until hospital time so that every minute of leave is with baby.

nan199678

Our family can't really afford me not doing my daycare. Even making as little as I do now it's a struggle. That w the fact that I MISS adults & non child related work I have been wanting to get back to work after the baby is finished breastfeeding, around 6 months. I just also don't want to miss that time w her. I'm really torn. I'd love a 3-4 day a week gig that would work financially but not sure about any of it yet. I am lucky to have the work from home option, even if I do not love it.

michelleepotter

I'm a SAHM, but I do need time away from my every day responsibilities to recover, even if those responsibilities don't usually mean leaving the house to go to work.

I am so glad that this baby is coming at Christmas, because I don't have to arrange for extra time off from homeschooling. This year is really important, since my oldest two kids are high school freshmen now, and it's more important than ever for them to get everything done. We're taking off the same days as the public school kids, which means we're off from Dec 21st - Jan 6th, and the baby is most likely to come some time between the 22nd and the 26th. That is pretty ideal for me.

I would love it if DH could take off of work that whole time, too, but it's unlikely. He's starting a new job in October or November, so it might be too late for him to take extra time off during the holidays. But maybe he can make it a condition of accepting the job. I don't know. I mean, surely they will understand that we're having a baby?

The one and only thing I like about giving birth in the hospital is that I get a couple of days out of the house, no responsibilities, someone else cooking and cleaning and watching the kids. So I'm looking forward to that. Last time, after my youngest was born, I spent another two weeks at home just laying in bed with the baby while my husband's family looked after the house and kids for me. I don't think I will need two weeks this time (hopefully not having another c-section), but I definitely hope to be able to do absolutely nothing but snuggle the baby for at least a few days. This time around I have teenagers, so I don't think it will be a problem.

samarieL

We have saved up my Dh's vacation time this year so that he will take the first week completely off work and the 2nd week he will work from home. Then the third week I'll be on my own with the five kids again. I stay at home and we homeschool and to be honest I'm excited about our current plan/line up. I know that adding the baby will throw things off routine a bit but I think two weeks with DH home to help will be just the right amount of time. Then we can all get back into a routine that third week and hopefully I'll be feeling pretty decent by then and if not I've taught my oldest two children to run a load of laundry start to finish, they all know how to work the wii for netflix and amazon prime, and the three boys can all use the microwave and make pb&j sandwiches. So we'll all survive one way or another. lol

kcasey155

I'm a SAHM, but my other half is self employed, so does not get time off. He can however take a couple of hours out of his working day, so he'll be working while the other four kids are in school/nursery after dropping them off and finishing in time to pick them up. Other than that he's not much use, e.g. this morning he couldn't work out how switch on the washing machine after I'd filled it! Really, one switch! (And first of all he was looking at the wrong machine, the tumble dryer!) But baby is due the first day of the school half-term holiday in which case I'll be expected to look after all the kids as soon as I'm out of hospital, so I'll also be staying in hospital for as long as I can swing it, then I'm hoping my MIL will come to my rescue

Ideally, someone would whisk the other kids away for a week or move in and take care of everything so I could concentrate on recovering and looking after baby before being thrown back into the thick of it all. Huh, a girl can dream!