Maternity leave - Do I or don't I?
Hi. Can anyone offer advice for maternity leave - any experiences you can share to help me decide whether I should take just a month off for maternity leave or the full 39 weeks? I keep changing my mind and want to give parents enough notice. Baby's due early October - 4th baby so I know what I'm doing :-) I really don't want to let anyone down but with my 3rd child - 16 months ago, getting dressed in the morning was difficult but other than that I was in my routine pretty quickly with her. The only other issue I had was that her tongue tie wasn't diagnosed until she was 9 weeks so I had 9 weeks of constant mastitis - severe flu like symptoms and some days I was in so much pain I couldn't even pick her up - I persevered with Breastfeeding though until she was 1 and plan to do the same with this one. Is Breastfeeding hard when you're minding? I'm going to get this baby checked out for tongue tie before before leaving the hospital so hopefully the same won't happen again. Sleepless nights I know would be hard, but a pro to continuing minding would be that the other children really entertain my daughter - she's bored when I'm not minding! Money wise - I'd be taking a cut to go on maternity leave but the time with the newborn I'm sure would outweigh this. I really don't know how long to take off!! Please help! X